


Never Let Me Go

by CornishGirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Complete, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Alteration, Mystery, Supportive Sam, What's screwing with the boys?, multi-chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 10:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7840657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CornishGirl/pseuds/CornishGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a hunt, Dean is taken—but by what, no one knows. Despite being found and seemingly healthy, he remains unconscious; worse yet, once he rouses it's clear he's missing time. Memories are intact, but are they from "now?" Or from years earlier? Are they even real, or is his mind playing tricks? Sam swears Dean's in the present. But IS he? Is Sam? </p><p>(Multi-chapter, set in S5.  COMPLETE)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is intended to be complex mind-game for the boys (and for readers!), and features much timeline hopping—which will be explained at the end of the story. In the meantime, let the date-stamps be your guide

**~ NOW ~ **

"Dean? Dean—hey!"

 _It was the eyes. Always the eyes, with Dean_.

He built walls, strong walls, but those who knew him best, those very few who knew him best, knew to look into the eyes to find the truth—and the treasure.

Sam knew his brother. Knew him better even than their father ever had, he was certain, because their father only ever wanted two things from his eldest: Obedience. Perfection.

Dean was far from perfection. Sam knew that. But he knew, too, that Dean had tried harder than anyone on earth to meet the expectations of John Winchester.

"Dean!"

Sam had loved his father. He came to it late, that realization, because for too long, in those desperate years when a boy struggles to become a man, he resisted. Rebelled. Refused to become what his father desired. And left.

Then, just when he was truly old enough, responsible enough—in the way of hunters, that is—to begin to understand the challenges his father dealt with on a daily basis . . . well, then John Winchester was dead.

And Sam had never known him.

Not truly, as a man might. He knew him from the limited viewpoint of younger son who had lost the formative years of the transition from boyhood to manhood. He'd left at eighteen. Had not rediscovered his father again until he was halfway to twenty-three. And then, in less than a year, his father was dead.

But Dean . . . Dean had known their father very well indeed. Never had he resisted, rebelled, or refused. He _was_ what their father had made, taking the clay and bone at the age of four and working it, shaping it, firing it, to the age of twenty-seven.

Sam loved his brother more than life itself. And if Dean was what their father had created, well, then Sam loved John Winchester every bit as much.

_It was the eyes. Always, the eyes._

"Dean!"

Sam had never known their mother. But he had seen photographs. Had heard their father, now and again, talk about Mary, whom Sam knew as "Mom" only from how Dean described her, because Mary had died when Sam was six months old. He knew that he himself bore John's stamp upon him in the dark hair, darkish eyes, tanned skin . . . but mostly in the dimples. Deep dimples whenever he smiled. Just like his father.

Dean lacked the dimples. Dean was all Mary: the distinct clarity in the architecture of facial bones, the full lips, the expressive eyes. Long-lidded, liquid, sea-green eyes. For all he could be a ferocious competitor, even a predator, and indisputably all alpha male, he was still his mother's son, and there was a refinement in the angles of his face that was different from Sam's, from their father's.

Mary had been dead for years. While she certainly inhabited Sam, she lived on most significantly in her oldest son.

Yet it was in those eyes, now, this moment, as Sam looked upon them, that he saw an emptiness, an _apartness_ , that was not of the earth he knew. And it terrified him.

His brother's body was present. Conscious. His mind was—elsewhere.

"Dean! Dammit . . . can you hear me?"

* * *

 

  **~** **FOUR DAYS EARLIER** **~** **  
**

"Sam! _Down!"_

And Sam dropped.

No hesitation. Not for an instant. Dean said _"Down!"_ and Sam followed orders.

He never questioned such orders from Dean. Just as Dean had never questioned them from their father.

 _"_ _Sonuvabitch!"_ That, too: Dean _._

Sam threw himself flat, belly-down, protecting his head with clasped hands, tensed against the blast from the shotgun practically on top of him. He closed his eyes tightly.

And that was why he never saw what took his brother.

* * *

Two days. Two days Dean had been missing. A frantic Sam had searched the desert wilderness of the Superstition Mountains outside of Phoenix where they'd hunted a chupacabra. He worked the land in a grid pattern, dragged back dense creosote bushes, sagebrush, looked beneath the massive spreading crowns of palo verde and mesquite trees. He dodged sentinel saguaro cactus, tripped over prickly pear, avoided like the plague the dangerous cholla called "jumping cactus" because it loosed sections of thorny limbs into human flesh or clothing if one barely brushed it. Sam had learned the hard way that cholla thorns were many and hooked, and ridding oneself of an attached chunk required care and a comb, not a hand attempting to knock it away. Because then the broken limb attached itself to the hand.

Snake holes. Vermin burrows. Flaky soil a mix of sand, pebble, and dust. The heat was nearly unbearable. Those who lived in the Arizona desert told visitors never to go a'hunting in the heat of high summer—but none of them knew what the Winchesters hunted. Sure, they'd gone out at night beneath the light of a full moon, but Sam hunted by day now—hunted his brother by day—because it was easier to see beneath a bright sun than under the waning moon when one was looking for a lost person. Or even a body.

God. Don't let it be a body.

Not Dean's.

 _Please/please/please, not Dean's body_.

* * *

A day later he found him. Sam fell to his knees at his brother's side, felt for a pulse at once. Found one, felt the surge of relief so powerful his hands trembled. "Hey! Hey, Dean . . ."

Dean was barely conscious, sprawled beneath a low-branched palo verde tree. He was sunburned, filthy, lips cracked, fingernails torn, hands stippled with scratches and scrapes.

He lay on his left side. Sam turned him over carefully. His clothing and boots suggested he had fallen, even dragged himself along. Though Sam would do a full triage exam when they were back at the motel, there were no apparent broken bones, and other than being dirty, a little scratched, his face bore no wounds. Where he wasn't sunburned he was deathly pale, and caked with dried sweat. Stains down his shirt front suggested he'd vomited.

They'd hunted in the Southwest before and knew the rules of how to survive in triple-digit heat. But monsters didn't always play by the rules. Dean was a couple of miles from where Sam had last seen him, and he was without his duffel, which Sam had found and returned to the car. He'd located shade, which probably saved his life, but his condition suggested he'd had no water since he'd been taken.

For his search, Sam had backpacked in their first aid kit and a few hot weather supplies. A quick check with the ear thermometer showed Dean's temperature at 103.1 High, but not in fatal heat stroke range; Sam thought it more likely heat exhaustion. He stripped Dean down to his boxer-briefs, sloshed water over him from head to toe, broke out the chemical coldpacks and placed them at armpits, beneath his neck and the small of his back, at his groin. He then and only then uncapped the electrolyte solution, lifted Dean's head, and placed the bottle at his lips.

"Just a little," he said. "Just a little for now. Swallow, Dean. A couple of sips. Don't want you to throw it all up. We'll take it slow. Come on, Dean. Swallow."

Dean didn't even attempt to speak. Fluid ran down his chin, onto his throat, washing away caked dirt. He blinked twice, stirred a bit, choked, then took two swallows.

"Good. Good, Dean. A little more. Couple more sips. Doin' good."

When half the bottle was gone, Dean stirred again, finally spoke. The word was hoarse, slurred, but recognizable. "S-Sammy . . ."

"Yeah. Yeah, I've got you. You're okay, Dean. Listen, I'm going to pour more fluids into you, check your temp again, and if you're going the right direction I'll go get the Impala. I've gotta get you out of here, into some a/c. Right now, though, I'm gonna soak you down. Lie back a minute, okay?"

Sam settled Dean's head back against the ground, checked the cold packs, then wadded up Dean's tee and long-sleeved shirt, soaked them with water, spread the wet clothing over his brother's chest and thighs.

"Half-assed evaporative cooling," Sam noted, "but it works. Okay, more fluids." Again he lifted, cradled the back of his brother's skull. "Don't gulp. Just sips. Go slow."

But Dean was a little stronger now, a shade more alert, and he wanted more than Sam allowed him. One trembling hand closed over Sam's, pressed the bottle back toward his mouth. He managed two gulping swallows before Sam pulled the bottle away. "Puking is not going to help you, Dean."

Dean strung two words together that suggested what Sam might do to himself.

"Anatomically impossible." But Sam grinned nonetheless, relieved to hear the rejoinder. "Okay, let me check your temp again."

"Dude . . . I'm _wet . . ._ "

"Feels good, doesn't it?"

"Feels _wet_ , s'what it feels. Damn, Sammy—what are you doing to my ear?"

"Checking your temp."

"In my _ear_ . . .?"

Sam shook his head; Dean was clearly confused, which went hand-in-hand with heat exhaustion. "It's an ear thermometer. Remember? Hospitals use them now. Though of course I could go with a rectal version, if you like."

A shiver coursed down Dean's body, but Sam didn't know if it was in response to the rectal thermometer imagery or the coldpacks.

"Okay, you're down a degree. Good job. Listen, the car's not far, maybe a half-mile. I'll bet that's probably where you were trying to get to. Almost made it, too. I'm leaving another bottle of fluids with you . . ." Sam wrapped Dean's right hand around it . . . "plus our backup cell, though reception's a little iffy, and I'll be right back. Got that? Dean?"

"—yeah—"

Sam dug out a metal signaling mirror, rose, hung it by a cord around a tree branch. Years of hunting gave him a sound sense of direction, but it never hurt to add a little insurance. The sun stood high overhead, and the metallic glint off the mirror would bring him back to Dean if he got off-course.

"I'm gonna drive the car right up to you," Sam said, "and I don't want any complaints about sagebrush and creosote getting stuck in the undercarriage."

"Don't you scratch her paint!"

Maybe Dean wasn't confused after all, or maybe care for his car superseded even self-preservation. Sam grinned as he turned westward. "Shut up and drink, bro."

* * *

**~ 2001 ~  
**

"Why, Sammy? "

Sam shook his head. It was a sadness in his soul, that Dean was so surprised. "If you even have to ask, you'll never understand."

"It's not a bad life—"

He couldn't help himself: it was raw response to pure emotion. "It's a _terrible_ life, Dean! Oh, I get it—it's 'the family business.' But _Dad_ made it that way. Not us. Not you and me."

It wasn't a bar, though Dean would have preferred it, Sam knew, because his baby brother was only eighteen and therefore not 'legal.' So they sat in a diner on the southwest corner of Lexington and Main, let the waitress take away their empty plates, and sucked down soft drinks in a booth in the back of the place.

"Look, Sammy . . . " Dean leaned forward, curling abdomen against the table's edge as if physical closeness might make a difference. "If you just need some time away, a break, maybe Dad would—"

Sam wasn't buying the appeal and cut him off. "Dad would _what?_ Take us to Disneyland?" He shook his head, tone bitter. "First of all, he wouldn't . . . well, maybe, yeah, if it was haunted . . . but that's not what this is about. I want a _life_ , Dean! I want to go to college."

Frowning, Dean shook his head. "We have a life, Sammy. We're helping people."

He knew better, but sometimes his brother seemed so _dense_. "There are other ways to help people, Dean. Cops. Doctors. Firefighters . . . any number of other professions. And they at least pay a living wage. They at least have benefits. What do we get for the Winchester way of helping people?—nothing! No pay, no thanks, no health plan, no 401K—"

Dean's tone shifted from exasperated bewilderment into something much harder. "And that's what you want, Sam? Health and dental bennies? A retirement plan?"

Why could his brother not see it? "That's what people _do_ , Dean! Normal people! It's not wrong if I want to be normal!"

Dean was clearly perplexed. Not stupid; just so focused he could not comprehend another way. "But we're not, Sam. We're not normal. Winchesters just _aren't_."

He so badly wanted his big brother to understand. But maybe he couldn't. Or wouldn't. Maybe Dean was so entrenched in their father's training that he couldn't break away, couldn't be his own man.

And so he said that, because he meant it—and because he wanted Dean to see it for what it was. "Don't you want to be your own man someday, instead of Dad's puppet? Why don't you go to school, Dean? What's stopping you?"

The tone was tighter than Dean probably wished it to be. "Maybe because I'm a high school dropout, Sam."

Sam leaned forward. "You got your GED. You could get into a junior college, go for two years, then switch to a 4-year university—"

"Sam."

"You're not stupid, Dean. Hell, you could be a mechanical engineer. You've got the math skills, the know-how . . . there are classes you would ace."

"Sam—"

"You could probably test out of some of the early boring classes, just based on your life experience. You could—"

Dean brought a fist down and bounced the tall, pebbled plastic glasses against the wooden tabletop. "Sam, stop it! I'm not going to college. That may be your dream, but it's not mine, okay? I'm doing what I want to do."

"You're doing what _Dad_ wants you to do. Dean—you're twenty-two. Most guys your age—"

"I'm not 'most guys,' Sam! And I don't want to be."

"Well, I am. And I do. And I'm going to college." Sam pulled the #10 envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket, pressed it down against the table. "I've been accepted to Stanford. It's a really good school, Dean. One of the best. And I made it."

Dean's eyes flicked to the bent envelope, then lifted back to Sam's. "How the hell did you get in? Don't you need a parent's consent?"

"Not when you're eighteen. And I have references. I scored really well on my SATs and a lot of my high school teachers encouraged me to go. They wrote letters of recommendation for me."

Dean stared at him. "You're really going to do this."

"I am."

" _Leave_ us. Dad and me."

"Dean—" Sam shifted in his seat. "It's not _leaving_. Not like desertion or abandonment. It's called growing up."

Dean tilted his head slightly, mouth twisted. "Low blow, Sammy." He lifted his glass, drank. The eyes, the oh-so-expressive _Dean_ eyes, were angry, and bitter, and cold.

Sam had seen them that way before. But never with him. Not like this. "No, Dean . . . hey, I didn't mean it like that. I'm not trying to run away. I'm just—"

"—growing up."

Sam picked up the envelope, looked at his name printed on the front. He'd used Bobby Singer's salvage yard as an address, because he couldn't be sure how long they'd be in any one place; and Bobby instead of Pastor Jim because Bobby, in his way, was closer to the boys than to their father. The envelope had been forwarded twice. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. I don't want to kill monsters anymore, Dean. I put my time in . . . I know what the life is. It's not what I want. And maybe you don't believe it—but there's nothing wrong with wanting something else. People do different things all the time." He twitched a shoulder. "Hell, we don't even know what Dad's father did. I just want—"

The anger was gone from Dean's eyes, but not the bitterness. The loss. "More. That's what you want. _More_."

"Yeah."

"Because you're the smart one, and Dad . . . well hell, Dad and I are just grunts, aren't we?"

"Dean, no—"

"Are you ashamed of us, Sammy?"

Sam's mouth dropped open in shock. "Ashamed? _No_ , Dean! God, no—you and Dad are the two bravest men I know! You're strong, and focused, and you have this incredible ability to land on your feet no matter what's coming at you. I admire it, Dean. But—"

"But I'm not your superhero anymore. Is that it? You discovered somewhere along the way that I'm mortal." Dean's mouth twitched in a quick, humorless smile of acknowledgment, of irony. "And I'm not Santa Claus, either."

Sam returned the envelope to his inside pocket, then spread his hands upon the table. He spoke with careful clarity, avoiding passion that might lead him down a road he did not wish to follow. "I just want something different. That's all. A chance to find out who Sam Winchester really is. You figured out early on who you are, Dean . . . well, I still need to do it. I'm going to school."

A trace of mockery shaped the tone. "To _'find yourself_.'"

Sam stared back. "Yes."

After a long moment, Dean shook his head. "And if I asked you to stay—"

Sam overrode him. "Don't. Just—don't."

"Crap, Sam . . ." Dean pushed away from the table, set his shoulders against the padded booth. Looked anywhere but at his brother.

"You don't need me," Sam said. "You can research as well as I can, you just don't _like_ to. I'm not as good at hunting as you and Dad. I'm not the shot you are, I don't fight as well, and you spend 'way too much time jumping in front of me or pushing me out of the way. If I'm gone, you'll stop protecting your little brother and look after yourself."

Dean's gaze was hard. "Nice justification, Sammy. And it's bull. All of it. You're eighteen. When I was your age, Dad was jumping in front of _me,_ and pushing _me_ out of the way."

"I'm going," Sam said. And in his brother's eyes, finally he saw that Dean already knew it, had accepted it. Just didn't want to admit it.

Dean's hand closed around the glass, moved it in a scraped circle. Delaying a response, though eventually he gave one. "Stanford, huh?"

"Yeah."

John's oldest boy hitched one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Well, like you said . . . it's a good school."

Something kindled in Sam's chest. A trace of relief, of joy. "It's not forever," he promised. "I'll call regularly, come home on holidays—"

Dean's face twitched. "We don't exactly have a regular home, Sammy. We're blowing this pop-stand in two weeks."

Sam sighed. "You can go to Pastor Jim's, or Bobby's. I can meet you wherever. Spring break, even. I'm not walking out on you and Dad."

Dean's eyes were shielded behind lowered lids. "Yeah. You are." He shook his head, mouth twisted. Looked his brother square in the eye. "Because you know what Dad's going to say when you tell him." Then he slid out of the booth, hitched his thumb toward the door. "Come on. I'll drop you at the house. Then I'm hitting a bar, while you and Dad have your little I'm-going-to-college talk."

Alarmed, Sam levered long limbs out of the booth. "You're not going to run interference for me?" Because he always did. Always.

Dean didn't hold back. "Hell, no, College Boy. Ain't that part of growing up?"

And Sam realized that no words could possibly assuage the hurt in his brother. No matter what he said, no matter how carefully he crafted his explanation, Dean took it personally.

And Dad . . . well, Dad would be worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As mentioned, this is a brain-teaser of a ride. Feel free to comment, even speculate over what you think might happen!

**~ NOW ~**

At Dean's bedside, Sam had no clue why he suddenly flashed on the conversation he and Dean had shared the night he left for Stanford. He thought perhaps it had something to do with the fact that his older brother, rather than being angry and bitter over Sam's upcoming 'defection' with all his emotions exposed, currently lay unmoving in the motel room bed staring empty-eyed at the ceiling.

Always the eyes, with Dean. Bright and big and full, either darkened by dilated pupil or green in the light of day, fixed upon infinities in those spaces between one moment and the next, those instants Sam couldn't grasp, couldn't understand, because Dean simply _went_ _inside himself_ , leaving no doors for anyone to open, no windows to look through.

No lockpick would ever open the door Dean kept warded against anything he might view as an invasion of his soul, a breeching of his walls.

Sam, who loved history, thought even Richard the Lionheart might not be able to sap Dean's fortress at Acre, nor would Alexander take Tyre.

He looked upon his brother, tried to find hope. "Be my superhero again, Dean. Come back from this."

But Dean had gone inside himself.

* * *

**~ 2006 ~  
**

He was blank. Was empty, as Sam walked away from him in Bobby's yard.

And then all the rage and grief and shock and pain and _utter_ _desolation_ was a white-hot blaze in his head and heart, and he gave into it, welcomed it, embraced it. He clasped the tire iron in trembling hands and let loose with it. Smashed window glass in one car, then turned, lunged, and brought down iron upon steel, blow after blow after blow, so hard he grunted with it. Beating on Baby.

When what he wanted was to cry. To shout. To scream at the world that _it wasn't fair_.

Christ. His father was dead.

What he wanted was to _howl_.

Sammy had nearly done him in. So much pain in those simple sentences.

_"I miss him, man. And I feel guilty as hell. And I'm not all right. Not at all."_ And then the shot to the heart _. "But neither are you. That much I know."_

Not John Winchester.

Not.

No.

This time, Dean howled.

* * *

**~ NOW ~  
**

Sam, pacing from wall to wall at the foot of the beds, heard the sound. It was low, choked off, then rose to a thin, throttled keening.

The sound was so abnormal, so _wrong_ , that it shocked Sam to his soul. It sounded nothing like Dean. Nothing like a human.

But it was sound. It was _something_.

In two long strides he reached the bedside, dropped to one knee. He reached out, caught his brother's arm. Gripped it, as if to tether Dean to the world.

"Hey. _Hey!_ Wake up. _Wake up._ "

But the eyes, the open eyes, were nonetheless empty. A conscious, breathing body lay upon the bed, but _Dean_ wasn't present.

Silence. The parted lips didn't move. The sound was not repeated.

_"Hey."_ Sam squeezed the arm. "Dammit, Dean. Don't do this. Stop with this crap. Come back. Come back to me. Wake up."

But he was awake, Sam knew. In some awful, terrible way, Dean was awake. He just wasn't _here_.

Sam found himself back on his feet, hands fisted in Dean's tee and flannel shirts. He bent Dean in half and yanked his brother's torso up from the bed.

And shook him. Hard. Giving in to the fear. _"Wake the hell up!"_

But the head flopped. Lolled. No expression crossed Dean's face. No sound was made, no acknowledgment that half his body hung from his brother's hands.

Swallowing tightly, Sam gently lowered Dean's torso back to the bed, rearranged limbs. Then he sat down on the edge of his bed and stared blindly at the floor, wondering what in the hell he could do to save his brother.

* * *

Sam awoke when he heard the toilet flush and the sink faucet running. He sat bolt upright in bed, cast a sharp glance at his brother's empty bed, then fastened his startled gaze on the closed bathroom door.

"Dean?" He got up, took several strides to the bathroom, closed his hand upon the knob and swung open the door.

His brother, in the midst of brushing his teeth, glared at him via his reflection in the mirror. Dean spat toothpaste, then said, with smears still upon his lip, "Dude. You'll get your turn. In the meantime—personal space!"

"Dean?"

And Dean shut the door on him.

Sam took a step away, saving his nose. Still totally confused, he turned, looked at the clock radio on the table between the two beds, noted that it was _not_ turned on, was _not_ playing Asia's "Heat of the Moment," and that the world seemed normal in all ways.

He smacked the door with the heel of his fist. "Dean!"

After a moment his brother yanked open the door. "What? Am I not allowed to brush my teeth by myself?"

"Dean, you've _been unconscious_ for two days! Or something. As in, lying in bed without moving, without talking, barely blinking. Just lying there, okay? Staring. So excuse me if I'm a little anxious to find out what the hell's going on—and no, you are _not_ allowed to brush your teeth by yourself until I get an explanation. Okay? And meanwhile . . . you have toothpaste on your shirt."

Dean pulled his chin close and attempted to peer down at his chest. "Okay. Well, maybe because you startled me when you used your Gigantor fist on the door." He brushed fleetingly at the toothpaste-and-spit stain, then gave his full attention to Sam. "Unconscious? Me?"

"Yes. You. I hauled your sunburned ass out of the desert, poured electrolytes and water into you, and the whole time you just lay there _staring_. "

Dean frowned back at him. "The desert?"

"Yes. The desert. We're in Arizona, dude. East of Phoenix. Don't you remember?"

Dean ran a hand down his face. "No. You sure?"

"It's like 280 degrees outside. Yes, I'm sure. Chupacabra."

"We gank it?"

Sam narrowed his eyes, assessed his brother more closely. "We never even saw it. Something attacked us. You shot whatever it was, but while I was diving for the dirt, you disappeared."

Dean shook his head. "Got no memory of that."

Sam supposed that made sense. Whatever it was that had grabbed his brother, he'd spent three days in the desert, two days in bed. Nothing about this smelled like normal. But Dean was back now, physically and mentally. "You okay? Hungry, maybe? You've only had soup for a couple of days, and not much at that."

Dean ran a hand down his belly. "Yeah, I could go for a burger. Or three."

"Start with one, or you may end up puking all over the table." Sam stepped back. "And if you're not gonna take a shower, I want the room. Hot water's got my name all over it." Though maybe, he reflected, tepid was better. In the desert. In the summer.

"Okay." Dean still seemed a little baffled. "Arizona?"

Sam unbuttoned and peeled off his long-sleeved shirt, now wearing just a tee, jeans. He'd removed his slip-on boots two days before. "We were in Utah, got wind of a chupacabra outside of Phoenix. In the Superstition Mountains."

" _Superstition_ Mountains? What is this . . . like, Hollywood?"

Sam smiled. "Colorful name, huh? Yeah, we're in Apache Junction. You said you were inclined to hunt for the Lost Dutchman's gold mine, but, you know: chupacabra."

Frowning, Dean padded out of the bathroom. "Go ahead. Shower's yours. Man, I got no clue about any chupacabra or dutchman."

Sam shrugged. "Heat exhaustion scrambled your brains. More than usual, I mean." He pulled fresh boxer-briefs, jeans, and tee out of his duffel. "Wouldn't hurt for you to drink some more fluids." He was just closing the bathroom door behind him when he heard Dean's raised voice.

"Sammy?"

"Yeah?"

"What time is Dad meeting us?"

Stunned, Sam yanked open the door. " _What?_ "

"What time is Dad meeting us?"

He could not begin to describe all the emotions pouring through him. He stared at his brother.

Dean shrugged. "He'll be pissed we didn't take out the chupacabra."

Sam opened his mouth. Then closed it.

How the hell do you tell your clearly confused brother that his father has been dead for five years?

* * *

He couldn't do it. He just couldn't do it. Say it. Not now. Not _yet_. He would. He had to. But—not quite yet. He needed to process, to figure out how best to explain.

Dean would lose their father _again_. And Sam couldn't do that to his brother.

Across the table from Dean, who was, in opposition to his normal habit, actually completely chewing every bite of his burger before swallowing—possibly to make sure he _didn't_ puke—Sam shifted against the booth.

"So—you don't remember anything?"

Dean shook his head. "Not a thing. I don't even remember coming to Arizona."

"Do you remember being in Utah?"

"When was that?"

"Last week."

Dean considered it. His brows twitched down. "Man. I've lost time. Did I hit my head, or something?"

"Not lately. And I checked you over in the room when we first got back, in case you got whacked while you were missing. No lumps or cuts." He paused. "What's the last thing you _do_ remember?"

Dean washed down the last bite of his burger with a swig of soft drink. "Me and Dad ganking a poltergeist in Montana." He eyed Sam. "So, what—is it spring break, or did you give up on school after the first semester? Mr. College Boy himself?"

Sam felt the breath leave his chest on a rush. Holy crap. Dean had lost _years_. "Uhhh, I . . . " He cleared his throat. "We've been hunting, Dean."

"I got that. Utah, you said. Now here." His brows rose. "When you going back to Stanford?"

Sam drew in a breath, embarked upon what he feared might be a difficult journey. "Dean . . . we've been hunting for _years_."

Dean was very still. "What?"

"Years."

"You and me and Dad?" Dean smiled a little. "The family business. Heh. How'd he talk you into it, Sam? Because you wouldn't have come back on your own." Dean's mouth curled into a crooked smirk. "Or else maybe you figured out the Winchester blood ran in your veins after all."

Not the time and place. And he was suddenly vastly uncomfortable. "Let's go," Sam said, sliding out of the booth and standing. "I want to go back to the room. You need to rest. Maybe get some sleep. It didn't look to me like you were sleeping before. Come on. Let's go."

"Wait, Sam—I was going to order pie."

"You can do pie another time." Sam reached down, clamped a hand around his brother's bicep. "Come on."

"Jesus, Sammy—what's got your panties in a wad? Let go of me!" Dean twisted his arm from Sam's grip, levered himself out of the booth and rose.

His brother was not a small man. People didn't realize it, tended to judge Dean by Sam's significant height. In his big boots Dean was close to 6'3" and weighed a solid 190. But Sam was not only taller yet, he also had thirty pounds on Dean. And he knew how to use them.

Sam set his hand behind Dean's back and literally _shoved_ his brother toward the door with a massive push. "Go, Dean. Just—go. You look tired. You _are_ tired." _And I really don't want to talk about school and Dad and Jess in the middle of a diner._

* * *

At the room, Dean would not let it go. "Jesus, Sam, when did you get so _hands-on_. You know I don't like the merchandise touched. It's valuable. I've spent twenty-six years refining this whole look, and you want to shove me all over a diner and ruin the effect? Sam—"

"Thirty-one." Sam closed the door, latched it. The moment was coming. He felt it.

"Thirty-one what?"

"Years. Dean—you're thirty-one."

Dean stopped dead in the middle of the room and stared at his brother. "I'm thirty-one?"

"Yes."

"When the hell did I turn thirty-one? I was twenty-six only yesterday." He paused. "Wasn't I?"

Sam didn't answer.

"What—you mean this merchandise is five years older than it was yesterday? And I missed it?" He scowled. "That was a helluva birthday. Or five. Hope I enjoyed it. Or _them_."

But Sam knew his brother. Dean was reaching, was trying to find something he knew, to cling to it without freaking. He had learned to control the intricacies of his body long before adulthood, had refined it since, and he looked relaxed, unconcerned. But the eyes gave it away.

_Always the eyes, with Dean._

Dean dropped the act. He sat down on the side of his bed, placing himself close to the twin lights screwed into the wall over the nightstand separating the beds. "Look again, Sammy." He ran a hand over cropped hair. "Okay?"

Sam could recite from memory practically every scar on Dean's body. They knew one another's bodies more intimately than other brothers because of what they did, and what they could not afford to risk, which was overlooking anything that might otherwise appear innocuous when it decidedly was not. They patched up one another on a regular basis, and triaged after every difficult hunt. Dean could be difficult sometimes, and close-mouthed about pain, but he wasn't stupid, and if he couldn't properly assess injuries for himself, he didn't hesitate to have Sam take a good look. Usually they danced the dance of the "I'm fines," and the "It's nothings," and the "Too far from my heart to kill mes;" though the latter was Dean's assertion, not Sam's. But when in doubt, they looked, and looked hard.

Two days before, with Dean somehow mentally _elsewhere_ while physically present, Sam had peeled apart his hair looking for any signs of injury, be it something minor like a thin, healing cut; a scab; a lump large or small. He had found bruises on Dean's legs and arms, a few scratches and scrapes gained in the desert, but nothing serious. And nothing at all anywhere on his skull.

But this was . . . hell, this was _missing time_. Dean believed Sam had only recently left for Stanford, that he was twenty-six . . . and that John Winchester was still alive.

"Yeah," Sam said. And he stripped the lights of their shades so the bulbs were unshielded, turned them on, proceeded to carefully work his way through Dean's hair, searching again for anything, anything at all, that might be an indicator. Dean sat very quietly and allowed it without protest. Tension poured off him.

Sam felt behind and beneath his ears, walked the pads of his fingers throughout Dean's scalp, peeled back and peered through the short-cropped bronze-gold hair. "I feel like a chimp looking for lice," he murmured.

"Thanks for that image. If I'm anything, I'm a gorilla. Big ol' silverback male, with a pride of females."

"Gorillas don't have prides. Lions have prides."

"I've got a lot of pride. I'm king of the freakin' jungle."

"Yeah, Dean, you're a big old lion napping in the sun for twenty hours a day."

"You're quoting 'The Hollywood Squares?'" Dean asked incredulously. "A game show?"

"Reruns. You had on some kind of a retrospective a while back."

"But that's, like, _old_. Besides, the sleeping part of the answer wasn't funny. It was lying around twenty hours a day humming 'Born Free.' That was funny."

Sometimes it wasn't even worth listening to his brother. Sam continued inspecting. "Nothing so far."

Dean rolled a shoulder. "I must have gotten clocked by something. You don't just lose time unless you've got amnesia. And I know exactly who I am, and that you're my emo-driven sasquatch of a baby sister."

"I don't see any signs of you being whacked," Sam said finally, straightening . "Yeah, it's possible something got you—I mean, something _did_ get you, because you disappeared from right in front of me and showed up three days later—but there's nothing I can see suggesting you got hit in the head."

Dean's tone was aggressive, but Sam heard an echo of hollowness. "Five years, Sam."

Sam nodded, drawing in a careful breath as he prepared for the coming battle. "Maybe we need to look at something else, Dean. Go to the hospital."

"Hospital! Why? I'm fine!"

"You're _not_ fine, Dean. Something happened. And maybe what we need to do is have a doctor look at you before we consider anything else. Because sometimes . . . " Sam shook his head, spread hands. "You know, shit does happen, Dean. Medical shit. To people who don't even hunt, just get up one day and keel over, or have seizures, or stroke out, or—"

"Sam, I got it! Jesus!" Dean lunged to his feet, strode away from his brother. Swung back. "That stuff doesn't happen to us, Sam. Not really. Medical shit. Not to hunters. Nothing _normal_ happens, even when it's a medical abnormality."

Sam lifted his brows. "Are you suggesting a 'medical abnormality' is normal? Did you forget what 'abnormal' means?"

Dean scowled at him, tension obvious in the stiffness of his shoulders.

"Alright. Okay. Sorry." Sam lifted a placatory hand. "I agree it's unlikely, in view of what we do; and in view, too, of what we were doing a few days back, and what happened in the midst of it. But look what happened with Dad. I mean, the docs all said it was an aneurysm, but—"

And then he stopped abruptly, realizing in horror what he'd just said. There was no easing into it, no careful lead-in, no preparing Dean for the worst.

Shit. Shit.

For Sam, five years removed. The pain and grief remained, but there was distance. A buffering.

Dean stared at him, eyes stretched wide. No distance, for him. No buffering.

Nothing, _nothing_ Sam could say would make it better. So he held his tongue. Just locked eyes with his brother and prayed that what Dean saw there was enough.

Knowing it wouldn't be.

Dean stood very still. He drew in a long breath. "Dad."

Sam said, "Dad."

And as his brother turned stiffly and walked out of the room, Sam closed his eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

**~ 2** **001 ~**

It was everything Dean expected, and all he dreaded. It came as no surprise. It came as no shock. But knowing _what_ was coming, and living through it - enduring the anger, anguish, and pain even as he experienced his own - was wholly different from anticipating what it _might_ be.

His father stood in the center of a small living room in a rented house. Yeah, he'd knocked back a couple of drinks; yet he was far from drunk. He was angry, and stunned, and afraid. And Dean knew it. Saw it for the first time. _Afraid_.

"I sent you _after_ him, Dean! You were to talk him _out_ of it, to bring him back!"

He'd known it then. He knew it now.

"Dean!"

"Yessir."

"You let him go?"

"I drove him to the bus station."

" _Damn_ it, Dean—"

"Dad—he's dead-set on it. And I . . . well . . ."

"You didn't try, did you? Didn't even _try_ to talk sense into him."

Dean disagreed. "I tried. And he heard me. But it doesn't matter, Dad. He wants something else. Something different."

"He needs to be _here_ , Dean!"

For the first time, Dean asked it. "Why?"

It stopped John Winchester dead in his tracks. Dean looked into the familiar face—tanned skin, scruffy beard, dark eyes expressive enough to grab a man's soul—and realized that now, maybe, if he was lucky, his father would actually _hear_ him.

"Dean—"

"I love that kid, Dad. He's an arm and a leg to me. Hell, he's my _heart_. But we can't keep trying to shove him into a box. You gave him brains, Dad, you and Mom—you gave him a mind to think with. And he knows this is not what he wants. Is that so bad? Is that so terrible? He's not going to another frickin' planet, Dad. He's going to _California_. Last I looked, it's part of the U.S. They have phones and everything." Dean didn't avoid the hard look in his father's eyes. "Look, Dad—you've got me. Okay? This is what I was meant to do. It's what I am, as much as you are. And that's okay. It's all good. I don't mean to sound like some emo chick-flick moment with 'nads in place of ovaries . . . but Dad, come on. One of the sons you made, you and Mom, is a loaded gun. Just aim me, okay? But let Sam . . . you know, just let Sam be what was good and kind in Mom. What was you before Mom died. Let him be something we _aren't_. Okay?"

He had never, ever, not once, poured his heart out to his father. Not like this. But as he stood there in the rental house, from which Sam had fled hours before on the heels of his father telling him not to come back if he walked out the door, he realized that what he said was the truth—and that he never _could_ have said any of it before now.

Because now, Sam was gone. For the first time in eighteen years, there was no Sammy Winchester under their roof. Just John. Just Dean. The eldest. The chip off the old block. The apple that fell straight down from the tree, and didn't even bounce.

"Aren't I enough?" Dean asked. "I know you'll miss him. _I'll_ miss him. But you and me, Dad . . . aren't we enough to take out that yellow-eyed son of a bitch? Can't we let Sammy be free of it? Free of that bastard? Do you have to sacrifice a _third_ Winchester to obsession?"

Shock stunned John into absolutely stillness. "Jesus, Dean—"

"Think about it, Dad. You put that kid into my arms the night he turned six months old, and set me a task. Gave me a job: to get him safely from that house. Never once did you say we were to stop him from growing up. You didn't tell me it was a permanent job, that he'd never grow up and we'd keep him down on the farm. You wanted me to keep him safe, _and I have_. But you never said I was to stop him from going out into the world and trying to live a life. Maybe you never saw it, never expected it of him; maybe you thought he'd be just like me. But he's not, Dad. He's just Sam. Sammy. And he's smart, and good, and kind . . . and all the things we maybe might have been, you and me, if Mom hadn't died the way she did. There's no going back for you and me. There's only going forward. Going _on_. And that's okay by me. It's what I want. But I won't stand in the way of a kid who has the balls to not only want something different, but to go after it."

"Dean—"

"You've never laid a hand on me in anger," Dean said. "Not even when maybe I deserved it, not even when you were drunk. I know people may think it's otherwise, and I know CPS would stick their nose in and wonder about abuse, and I know there have been teachers who've looked at the bruises a frickin' _ghost_ put on me and they've assumed the worst. And I know you've never, ever even _thought_ of harming either of us. That's not Sam's issue. Sam's issue is he has a brain that works differently. And that's okay." Dean drew in a deep breath. "Dad—we don't live a normal life. No one but other hunters can ever possibly understand. You've done _exactly_ what you had to do, you've been _exactly_ what you've had to be, what any hunter with two young kids and a hard-on for revenge would have to be, and I get that. People are just _wrong_ to think otherwise. But you can't expect Sammy to be just like you, or be just like me. He just isn't. Aren't I enough? Can't we let him go?"

To Dean's astonishment, tears welled in John's dark eyes. "I can't, Dean. How will I protect him? If he's not here . . . how can I keep him safe?"

"Dad—"

"He's my son, Dean. My boy. He's _mine_ , and I love him. He's _Mary's_ , and I love him. I can't do a damn thing for him if he's hundreds - or thousands - of miles away in California. I can't _protect_ him."

'Protect.' His father had used that word twice within a minute or two. Never had Dean heard that word applied to Sam, coming from John. That _he_ was to protect Sam; oh yes, that had been made clear. But he had never thought of it in terms of his dad.

He looked at his father and asked a question with his eyes.

And John Winchester understood it.

"Yes," he said. "I protect you, too. Much as I can. But you're good, Dean. Better than good. I trust you with my life every time we go on a hunt. I protect you—but you protect _me_."

Dean drew in a ragged breath. "You told me something once. About when you were in 'Nam. About how soldiers lost their way, or found their way."

John nodded.

"And you said that some soldiers found a way that was different from others, but that the way was no less important than what you did in the jungle, fighting the enemy."

"It wasn't," John said. "Took me awhile to see it, but I did. Some of us may take fire, but there are others who do the work, too. It's just a little different."

"That's Sam," Dean said. "That's Sam, Dad. You and me . . . well, we'll go out and take fire, okay? But it's time to trust that Sam's way is every bit as good. As valuable. It's just _different_."

After a moment, John Winchester turned away. But not before Dean saw the tears break free of his eyes.

* * *

**~ NOW ~  
**

When Dean didn't take the Impala, Sam was fairly certain he knew where his brother had gone. It was classic Dean, after a shock, to look for a bar. And he didn't have far to go; a place called The Longhorn stood in a parking lot adjoining the motel's.

Sam debated leaving Dean to himself. And for awhile he did exactly that, because if Dean's sun-baked Swiss cheese brain still defaulted to _before_ their father died, to when Sam was still at Stanford, he wouldn't recall the moment in 2005, in Chicago, after the daeva had torn them apart, when John Winchester had pulled his youngest son into his arms and clung to him, saying so much without uttering a single word. It was in his eyes, in his expression, in his posture. So many angry words between father and son over the years, so many marching orders Sam didn't want to follow; and yet, in that moment, Sam knew just how deeply his father loved him.

He _hadn't_ known, when he left for Stanford that miserable night; in Chicago, all had come clear. But if Dean couldn't access the memories of their last five years together since their father's death, his recollection would be of knock-down, drag-out arguments, and himself trying to play peacemaker between two stubborn Winchester males.

Dean had just lost his father again. And didn't know how. Didn't know why.

Had no knowledge, either, of the deal his father had made to save his life.

For Sam, it had been difficult enough living through it once. But now? _Again?_

There was a saying: _Ignorance is bliss._

For hunters, ignorance was deadly.

For Dean, in these circumstances . . . would ignorance of the details of their father's death, of the deal that bought him his life, provide any kind of balance? Reduce his grief?

Sam remembered the scene in Bobby's salvage yard when he'd confessed - in the face of his brother's unspoken but obvious desire to be left alone - that he missed his father. That he missed his father, that he felt guilty, that he was not all right.

That neither was Dean.

He had walked away from him then, because Dean's raw pain was too hurtful for a younger brother to witness.

This time, he couldn't do it. He wouldn't. He was no longer a kid lost in guilt and grief. He would go to his brother instead, and stay where he belonged.

* * *

Dean never paid attention to his watch, or the wall clock, when he camped out in a bar. He just found a stool on which to perch, or a table, or a booth, and drank. Maybe picked up a lady. Maybe went home with her. Shot pool. Drank more than he probably should.

Not this time. This time he sat in the back, in a booth, and drank one beer. One shot of whiskey. A second beer, second shot, sat on the table as rent for the booth. So long as he had booze in front of him, even if he didn't actually drink it, no one would make any noise about him leaving so someone else could have the table.

The rush of coldness, the weakness that had struck his knees when he realized, in the motel room, what Sam meant, that their father was _dead_ , had passed. Now he was numb. So terribly numb.

 _You son of a bitch_ , he thought. _How the hell could you go and die on me, Dad?_

Impossible. Inconceivable.

Dean stared into a room he didn't see and tried to envision a world without John Winchester in it.

When Sam arrived at the booth and slid into it, Dean wasn't surprised. What did surprise him was that the kid, when he sat down across the table, wasn't a kid anymore. Gone were the heavy bangs hanging so low over his brow; he wore his hair longer yet, and parted. Gone, too, was the liquid-eyed innocence that had defined Sammy Winchester for so many years.

Dean couldn't help himself. "What the hell happened to you?"

Sam's brows rose. "Me? What do you mean?"

"You were a tall drink of water when you left for Standard, but you were all arms and legs, not shoulders and pecs. And I think you got taller. What are you now?"

Sam's smile twitched, and a dimple appeared. "Six-five. Two-twenty."

"Huh." Dean eyed him. "Be a bit tougher taking you in a sparring match, these days."

"A 'bit tougher?' Try impossible, Dean. Face it, you're the wuss now. The scrawny-ass Winchester." But Sam relented; his expression suggested it wasn't truly the right time for ragging on his brother. "Okay, I'm lying. Yeah, I take a match off you now and then, but you're still the toughest son of a bitch I know."

"Next to Dad—" And Dean stopped. He just stopped.

Sam knew what he needed. "Five years ago. We were in a wreck. The Impala was totaled, more or less. So were you, more or less. Dad was recovering, but then . . . " Sam shifted against vinyl, ill at ease. "The doctors said—"

"Aneurysm. I got that from before. But I know you, Sammy—that look in your eyes says there was more to it than that."

Sam nodded. " Demon."

It was a shock. And not. "Not that yellow-eyed bastard."

"Yes."

"Oh, crap." Dean hooked an elbow on the table, rubbed his brow with one hand. "I've lost too much, Sam. What the hell happened to me?"

"I don't know, but we'll figure it out."

Dean grabbed the whiskey, knocked it back. Moved on to the beer, then signaled for refills for himself and fresh for Sam.

"It's three o'clock, Dean. In the afternoon."

"Close enough to five. Not that I ever paid attention to that." Dean stared at his brother. "We were ganking a poltergeist in Montana. Me and dad. You were at Stanford. What the hell happened in between, Sammy?"

" _Here_ , we went out into the desert to take out a chupacabra, like I said. You disappeared from right in front of me, but I didn't see it because I was ducking salt rounds going off right over my head."

"That's not what I meant."

"I went to Stanford."

"I remember _that_ part."

"We stopped talking for a couple of years."

Dean stared at him blankly. Stop talking? Him and Sammy? "Why in the hell would we do that?"

Sam shrugged. "It got really complicated. We just . . . we were different people. Really different."

" _Years_ , Sam?"

"Then you came and got me, because Dad was missing."

"Didn't you go back?"

Sam said nothing as the cocktail waitress set down two shot glasses and two beer mugs. She cast a lingering glance at Dean, offered a smile, but he was focused on his brother. And his past.

"I went back," Sam said, once she departed. "I'd aced my LSATs, had an interview to apply to law school, but . . . " He picked up his whiskey, threw it back. Dean didn't recall ever seeing Sam drink whiskey with quite the same casual assertiveness. Like it was second nature.

"'But?'" Dean quoted. "Sam—you never wanted to be a hunter. You made that clear to both Dad and me. Why the hell would you run off to college, then quit after acing . . . whatever it was you aced."

Sam's eyes were on his beer. "I had a girlfriend."

Dean grinned. "Sammy had a girlfriend. How sweet. Did you take turns braiding one another's hair?"

No, there was no liquid innocence in Sam's eyes anymore; and no sign at all of the earnest puppy-dog expression. "She died. Demon got her the same way he got Mom. I never went back to school. We've been hunting ever since."

It took Dean's breath away. Demon. Fire. A woman dead. _Again_.

Too damn much for one family to deal with. The Winchester curse. "Oh, crap. I'm sorry, Sam."

"Her name was Jessica."

Dean felt helpless. Useless. Sam in pain was something he could not deal with. Never could. "Yeah," he said finally. "Yeah, I guess maybe I should."

Sam's brows knitted. "What?"

"Go to a doctor. Because this . . . because not knowing, losing things, losing _time_ , losing _memories_ , is dangerous. I don't want to live like this. I don't want surprises that cut you off at the knees. And while Dad wasn't much for hospitals and doctors, he always said we should rule out as much as possible first. So . . . " He caught Sam's glance. "Do we still have Elroy McGillicuddy's insurance?"

A smile tugged at Sam's mouth. "No. But we've got Dick Cheney's."

Dean said, "Who?" and saw the shocked widening of Sam's eyes. But then he relented, and smiled. "Yeah, I know. He's vice president."

"Was."

"Was?"

"It's 2010, Dean. We had another presidential election."

Dean rested his head in one hand and closed his eyes. "Shit. This is a pain in the ass, Sam."

"I guess if Bobby gets a new dog, it'll be Biden."

Dean frowned, lifted his head. "Bobby . . . Bobby Singer?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Bobby. " Then he stilled. "You don't remember Bobby?"

"Oh, I remember the son of a bitch who held a shotgun full of buckshot on Dad and ordered him off his property. That Bobby? Yeah, I remember."

Sam frowned in perplexion. "That was a long time ago. And it's all water under the bridge."

"Not under _my_ bridge, it isn't. It's stone cold dry, Sam. You don't point a loaded gun at Dad and remain on my Christmas List."

Sam was clearly stunned. "You were fine with it, Dean! Or you _got_ fine with it. Trust me. I don't know what's going on in your brain right now, but you and Bobby are close."

Dean frowned. "I don't remember it like that. Dad was pissed."

" _Yeah_ , Dad was pissed! And maybe you were for awhile. But you're over it, Dean. Long over it. Bobby's a good friend. The best. After Dad died, he kind of stepped in, took—"

And the anger came rushing, hard and hot. "Don't you _dare_ say he took Dad's place."

Irritation flashed in Sam's eyes. "No more than you did."

It was a gut-punch. "What did you say?"

"You didn't take his place either, Dean, even if you wanted to. Dad was Dad. Look, your brains are seriously screwed up right now, dude. I get that. But I don't want you bad-mouthing Bobby, because the man's done more for us than I can even begin to explain to anyone, let alone to someone missing five years of his life. You'd better trust me on this, because I remember better than you do. Besides . . ."

"Besides what?"

"I called him. And he's on his way here."


	4. Chapter 4

**~ NOW ~**

" _Christo_ ," Dean muttered, longing to throw a warding sign, or even cross himself against the evil apocalyptic machine looming nearby.

The medtech, standing beside the MRI table extending from the massive machine, looked down on him in some concern. "What?"

"It's . . . " No, no layman's explanation for it. "Jesus Christ. It's a name. It's a prayer. It's a curse."

"I know what 'Jesus Christ' means," the tech pointed out. He was young, in scrubs, opinionated. Or so Dean had decided. "That's not what you said. Are you Catholic?"

"No. And technically that _is_ what I said. ' _Christo'_ is Latin for 'Christ.' Which I have been known to say upon occasion, and right now it looks like this damn tunnel—" Dean waved an arm, "—is going to eat me. So you can count what I said as a prayer _or_ a curse."

"I take it you've never had an MRI."

"You take that right." Dean shifted. The table was padded, but he hated it anyway. They'd made him remove every stitch of his own clothing, leaving him in nothing but a flimsy gown; had interrogated him as to whether he had any foreign objects in his body, including a pacemaker, or even a bullet. Pins and screws for broken bones. Dean reflected privately that no, he had nothing of the kind inside him, and he was damn lucky. But he might need a pacemaker if they didn't hurry up and get the damn MRI scan overwith, because his heart was jumping like a jackhammer. "This was a stupid idea."

"You said you weren't claustrophobic."

"I'm not claustrophobic. Except when I'm on a plane. This looks like a plane. Only it's _smaller_. And I'm not really afraid to fly. I'd just rather be flying the plane myself."

"That's pretty common with control freaks."

"Oh, Jesus. Don't they teach you bedside manner in medical school?"

"I'm not a doctor. I'm a tech. And if you're going to be combative, I'll call for a sedative."

"Trust me, you son of a bitch, this is not combative!"

"Lie still. Be calm. Try to rest. Go some place in your head you find soothing. It'll help."

"No place in _my_ head is soothing, you jackass. It's kind of a mess inside there right now. Which is why I'm here waiting to be shoved like filling into a freakin' metal Ding-Dong."

"Look, I think you'll do better with a sedative onboard. Because I'm tired of arguing with you." The tech patted Dean's arm. "Back in a jiff. We'll shoot you up, then slide you in."

"Wait!" Dean called. "I'll hum Metallica. That calms me down. Or get Sam—get my brother, okay?"

But the tech returned with a nurse, ignored Dean's humming, did not retrieve Sam, and Dean, having been summarily sedated, called them names before he began to drift.

"Christ," he murmured as his limbs went slack.

Or maybe it was _Christo_.

* * *

 When Bobby Singer walked in through the sliding glass doors of the hospital's main entrance, Sam lurched to his feet. The ordinary noises of a busy hospital faded, leaving him solely focused on the older man with the ball cap pulled low over his forehead, clad in battered jeans and faded flannel shirt. Bobby had a nose slightly mashed from some encounter with the supernatural, a graying beard, and narrow eyes that nonetheless expressed the utmost concern whenever his boys were in trouble.

"What do we know?" Bobby asked as he halted in front of Sam.

"They hauled him off for head scans a while back. But he's fine, Bobby. _Physically_ fine, I mean. I checked him over head to foot when I first got him back to the motel. Once I got him rehydrated and his temp back down, he was normal."

"But you said he's missing time."

"Yeah."

Bobby sighed, sat down in the chair next to Sam's. "Give me the gist. More than what you said on the phone."

"Five years." Sam folded himself back into a chair that was not built to house men of his height. "As far as I can tell, he thinks it's 2005. He remembers things that happened _prior_ to 2005, but there are gaps. It's like everything is inside out. I didn't have time to find out much . . . I screwed up and let it slip that Dad was dead. It pretty much took the legs out from under him. But he thought I was still at Stanford. He didn't know about Dad, didn't know about Jess . . . he remembers the demon, but not what happened. I don't think he recalls what we did at the hellgate. That he killed Azazel." Sam shrugged. "Maybe I should tell him that, let him know he killed the thing that got Mom, Jess, and Dad. He might not remember, but I'd think it would give him some kind of pleasure to know he nailed the son of a bitch."

Bobby looked concerned. "If he doesn't remember the hellgate, then he doesn't remember what happened when Jake cut your spine in half."

Sam nodded. "Or the deal. Or hell."

"Christ." Bobby took off his cap, rubbed a hand through his hair, then tugged the hat on again. "Bad enough he lived through all of that once . . ."

"Do we even tell him? Do we hope he remembers? Or do we pray he doesn't?" Sam felt pressure in his chest. "You weren't there. You didn't hear him when he told me what he did in hell, and how he wished he couldn't remember a damn thing. He _broke down_ , Bobby. I don't know . . . I don't know if I could put him through that again. To know. To realize."

"Not for us to decide," Bobby said quietly. Then, as if it were too painful to contemplate, he changed the subject. "You think it was something that happened to him in the desert? Something supernatural?"

"I don't know, Bobby. I mean—I was conscious. I didn't _see_ what happened, but I was there, and aware. One minute he was standing over me firing the shotgun, and then he was just gone. It took me three days to find him, and he was a couple of miles from where we'd been hunting when he disappeared. He didn't just walk away from me, Bobby. Something took him."

Bobby's eyes were steady, as was his tone. "Unless he did walk away, and _you_ don't remember _that_."

Sam frowned. "What?"

Bobby glanced around briefly to judge how close others were to their chairs. "Sam—if it was supernatural, we can't know you weren't somehow involved, too. Dean may not be the only one missing time. Are you certain _you_ were in the same place? The exact same place where Dean apparently disappeared?"

"I never left," Sam said blankly. "Dean disappeared . . . I was right where it happened. I started searching. It was a full moon, very bright—no spillover illumination from city lights. And Dad taught us how to search, how to fix landmarks, work in grids. I had a compass. Tracked the north star. Cell phone GPS. Bobby—we'd set down our duffels. I was right there with them. Dean was just _gone_. No footprints. I didn't go far . . . stayed close to the duffels, the coordinates. Come morning is when I began a more systematic search." Sam shrugged. "I wasn't taken, Bobby. I'd remember it."

"Does Dean?"

Sam opened his mouth. Closed it. Then said, "Oh, crap. So, we don't know about me, either."

"Not really. If this has to do with rearranging time, mangling memories . . ." Bobby shook his head.

Sam considered that. "He doesn't even remember we were here to hunt. But I do, Bobby. I remember everything about coming down here from Utah. Dean's missing _years_."

"All right," Bobby said, in a tone Sam recognized as meaning to soothe. "But we've gotta be sure, Sam. We can't always trust our memories, you know. Even if they seem real. Seem whole. Memories can be tricky suckers. Especially if they've been altered somehow."

"I checked him over twice. No head injury that I could see."

"Well, the scans'll fill us in there. In the meantime, I did some digging. The only thing I found that can mess with memories— _that we know of_ —is a djinn. But you know that from when Dean got grabbed a few years back."

Sam did indeed remember that. He remembered, too, with exquisite clarity, how he'd found his brother hanging by his wrists from a warehouse beam, blood being drained from his neck into an IV bag. To this day the image sent a quiver of nausea through his gut.

_"I thought I'd lost you."_

_"You almost did."_

And Dean had wanted to stay.

"Salt rounds don't affect a djinn," Sam said. "Dean shot at something. That's why I hit the dirt. He saw something, and fired."

Bobby's tone was dry. "If you were out in the desert beneath a full moon with a shotgun in your hands, not a silver knife dipped in lamb's blood, and a djinn popped up in front of you, what would you do?"

Sam sighed. "Shoot it."

"Buy some time," Bobby clarified. "But I agree with you, Sam—it don't make a lick of sense. Djinn hang around ruins, not out in the middle of a desert. This don't sound like any djinn I've ever read about, nor what you said happened to Dean before. This could be a whole 'nother kind of animal we're dealing with. So to speak. And you could be smack in the middle of it,too, Sam. We just can't be sure."

"We need to go back out there," Sam decided. "It's been almost a week since we were there, but it's a wilderness. There are hiking trails, but we'd found some chupacabra tracks and cut off the Peralta trail a good hour before Dean fired. There may still be some signs, some evidence. Maybe we leave Dean behind—"

"Like _that'll_ happen."

Sam sighed, briefly pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay. We'll all go. See what we can see. And have knives prepped and ready."

"Depending," Bobby said quietly.

"'Depending?'" Sam looked at him. "Depending on what?"

"On what the scans show," Bobby answered. "You were right to come here, Sam. To get this looked into. Much as I hate to say it, it may not be supernatural at all. There could be a medical explanation." Bobby gazed over Sam's shoulder. "And this appears to be a doctor coming to say something. He's got that look."

Sam rose. Swung around. Saw the doctor. Glanced at Bobby. Felt utterly helpless. "Jesus, I don't know what to wish for."

"What do you mean?"

"That it's medical . . . or supernatural."

Bobby's mouth twitched briefly. "Hell, boy, I'm voting for supernatural. Because that we know we can beat."

* * *

 "Dean. Dean, wake up."

He fought his way up through the fog in his head. "Sammy?"

"Dean, you with me?"

"Sammy—what happened? Where'd you go?"

"Dean, it's not Sam. It's Dad."

Dad? But Dad was . . . Sam had said . . .

Dad here?

"Dad?"

"Yeah, kiddo.

So, Dad _was_ here. "Is Sammy okay?"

"He's probably fine. Dean—you know where you are?"

He did not. He attempted to say it, but all he could do was frown. A shiver coursed down his flesh.

"Okay, kiddo. Your eggs are still a little scrambled, but I think you're through the worst of it. Maybe another day. Take some juice, okay?"

He was sock-puppet limp, lying in a bed beneath blankets. He had no memory whatsoever of eating scrambled eggs. He cracked his eyes, squinted upward. "Dad?"

"Take a little juice, Dean. Then you can sleep."

"—tired."

"Yeah, you should be. Gatta venom knocked you on your ass. But you'll be okay."

He sipped juice through a straw as his father cradled the back of his skull and lifted his head. "Sammy's not hurt?"

"Sam's not here, Dean. He's hundreds of miles away."

"Where?"

"In California. Here—another sip or two. You've been running a fever, need the fluids."

He did as told, eyes dropping closed again. "Why's he in California?"

His father's sigh was heavy, but his tone carefully calibrated into evenness. "He's at school. Stanford."

Dean felt like pieces of himself were drifting just out of reach. "I can't remember."

"You will. It's the fever. You've been in and out. But I'm sure he's fine, Dean."

"No," Dean said. "You don't believe that. You said you didn't want him to go because you couldn't protect him. Couldn't _protect_ him."

"Dean, go back to sleep."

"Is there something after Sammy? Something that wants him? Like it wanted Mom?"

"Jesus, Dean . . ."

His father's voice sounded so ravaged that Dean opened his eyes completely. Saw that his dad sat on the bed beside him holding a cup in one big hand. Saw, too, that the knuckles stood out white on his father's hand.

"I'm mixed up in my head," Dean said, "but I remember. You were scared for him, Dad. Angry, yeah . . . but _scared_. What is it? What is it he needs protecting from?"

"Nothing, Dean. Go back to sleep."

He thought he might. More pieces of himself broke free, floated away. "I miss him, Dad. But he doesn't answer the phone anymore."

"I know. He won't take my calls, either."

"I miss him. I want him back."

"I know, son. So do I. More than you can believe."

Dean murmured, "If he won't call, won't answer . . . we could _drive_ out there."

"Maybe so. Maybe so, kiddo. In the meantime, we gotta get you well."

He could feel himself tipping toward the slide to fevered sleep. "Dad . . ?"

"Yeah?"

"You didn't mean what you said. I know you didn't."

"What didn't I mean?"

"That if he left, he shouldn't come back."

Dean felt his father's hand on his head brushing back sweat-crusted hair. "No. I didn't mean it. Sometimes I say things when I'm angry that I don't really mean. Bad habit. But Sam, well . . . your brother knows how to get under my skin. I'm not proud of it. It begins, and then it gets out of control. So yeah, maybe when we're done with this next job, we'll take a drive out to California, check on your baby brother. I'd like to see him again." He paused, and his voice was quiet. "I really would."

"Tell him, Dad . . ."

"Tell him what?"

"—that you didn't mean it—"

His father sighed deeply. "He won't believe me."

" — _tell him—_ "

"Okay, kiddo. I'll tell him."

Dean smiled faintly and lost his battle with sleep—

—until someone woke him up and said the plane had landed safely without his assistance, and he could relax now and stop mumbling about someone named Sammy. Or Dad.

"Jesus," Dean muttered, shifting against the table.

"Jesus has left the building. Soon enough, you can too."

* * *

The doctor was middle-aged, just beginning to gray, wore black glasses, a white jacket with his name embroidered on the left-breast pocket. Dr. James Corbin.

"Neurologist," he said, joining Sam and Bobby, shaking hands. "And while I've only taken a preliminary look at the images—I'll do a closer evaluation later—I can say that your brother appears to be perfectly healthy. They'll bring him out soon, but he'll probably be a little wobbly from the sedation."

Sam blinked. "You sedated him?"

"I understand Mr. Cheney was suggesting he be allowed to fly the MRI, because he would prefer to be in control of the plane. Or something to that effect."

"He said that _before_ sedation?" Bobby asked skeptically.

"Apparently he was being somewhat . . . _assertive_ . . . about certain opinions, and the tech felt sedation might calm him down enough to get a good scan. It takes awhile, and not every patient does well inside a hollow tube. At any rate, as I mentioned, all indications are that he's fine. But the brain can be complicated, and memory in particular is not well understood. There are two primary structures in the brain responsible for memory, with varying levels and types. Short-term, long-term, sensory, emotional . . . I could spell them all out for you, if you like, but—"

"—the kid's fine." Bobby nodded, exchanging a glance with Sam. "That's the important thing."

"It's possible the heat exhaustion you mentioned did affect him in some way, because high core temperature can cause damage. Confusion is one of the primary symptoms, but not usually a few days later. Nonetheless, it's possible. This is not retrograde amnesia, or even anterograde amnesia, which are generally caused by actual damage to the cerebral cortex, such as through head trauma, epilepsy, etc. "

"How do we fix him?" Sam asked.

"If it's simple confusion, it may resolve on its own," Corbin said. "But I'll evaluate further, as I said, and I would recommend a repeat of the tests if you notice any change in his memory at all, or any physical signs of worsening confusion. But we're not looking at trauma, or even disease. There's no evidence." He gestured briefly, as if to calm them. "I know this sounds unbelievable, but the world is full of mysteries."

"'Sounds unbelievable,'" Bobby quoted, in an exceedingly dry tone. "Well, trust me, we're pretty open-minded, doc."

Sam tried not to smile.

Corbin continued, oblivious. "We just don't have all the answers. Now, I've got other patients, but an orderly will have Mr. Cheney brought out here in a few moments. I've spoken with him about all of this, but he is still affected by the sedation, so you may have to repeat everything I've said. Good day."

Sam watched him walk away, then turned to Bobby and said with great solemnity, "'The world is full of mysteries.'"

"And most of 'em can be directly ascribed to the supernatural." Bobby tipped his head. "Here comes your brother. He's not lookin' best pleased bein' stuck in a wheelchair."

Sam turned, looked, then swung back to Bobby hastily. "Oh. Something you need to know. He's not entirely happy with you at the moment."

Bobby's brows jerked up. "He's not? Why not? I haven't talked to him in a couple of weeks, but we were certainly friendly last time I did."

"Because he's screwed up, Bobby, and his last memory of you is that you held a shotgun on Dad."

"His _last_ . . . " Bobby blinked, considered. "That was years ago. And he got over that. He told me so. Hell, he's even joked about it."

"I know. I told him. But he's lost time. Everything's scrambled. Really scrambled, Bobby. I don't know what he remembers, or what he only _thinks_ he remembers." Sam spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness. "For all we know, his brain is just making crap up. "

Bobby grunted. "Well then, we'd best find a way to _un_ scramble him. I really don't want to go waltzing through all the Dean Winchester anger management low-lights. When you were in school . . . well, let's just say your idjit brother could be a jackass sometimes, Sam."

"Oh, I think Dean manages that whether I'm in school or not." Sam turned as the orderly wheeled Dean to them. "Hey, dude. Doc says you're fine. Got a brain and everything."

Dean looked at him. His gaze wasn't entirely sharp, but he was most definitely all there. His eyes were fixed on Sam in that wide-stretched, unblinking Dean Winchester way. "Dad ever say he was sorry for telling you not to come back if you walked out the door?"

Shocked, Sam stared at his brother. He shook his head.

"Well, he meant to."

Sam drew in a breath. "What makes you think so?"

"Because he just told me."

"He—"  Sam blinked.  "He _just_ told you . . . Dad did?"

"Few minutes ago."

Sam tried again. "Dad did."

"Few minutes ago."

Wide-eyed, Sam looked at Bobby fixedly.

" _Balls_ ," Bobby muttered.


	5. Chapter 5

**~ NOW ~  
**

Phoenix was big, almost a mini-Los Angeles. An online search had provided Sam with the names and locations of many hospitals, and he'd chosen the one with the name he knew because Kansas was not all that far from Minnesota, really, when it came right down to it. Mayo was the big one in Minnesota, and now it had a branch in Arizona.

But Mayo was clear across town from Apache Junction, a small rural suburb on the east side of the sprawling metro area. Sam had considered moving them to a motel closer to Mayo, but the hospital was in a far more expensive part of town. Besides, they needed to return to the Superstitions and look into what happened when Dean disappeared. So Sam, set to drive the Impala with Bobby following in his Chevelle, figured they'd just go back across town to the cheapo motel and work from there. It was familiar. It's what they always did.

What he hadn't planned on was Dean freaking out as they came up on an intersection.

* * *

"This is your future," the voice told him. "Do you understand?"

He did not.

But something punctured the flesh of his chest, stove in his ribs, drove into viscera, took root just beside his heart, and he wanted very badly to understand why he was dying.

"This is your future, Dean."

It was beyond pain. He could not catch his breath. He gasped, sucked, gulped, and blood welled up in his throat, into his mouth.

"You can avoid this. You can avoid it all." Pause. "This is _death_ , Dean. Is that what you want?"

And he said, as blood welled up in his chest, "It's better this way. The Mark . . . it's making me into something I don't want to be."

"Dean. You can avoid it all. You can _live_."

But Sam had him now. He heard Sam's voice. It was different than the other. Sam was lifting him, holding him, supporting him, murmuring about finding a way to fix him.

He was beyond fixing.

The other voice, the not-Sam voice said, "This is your future. You can avoid this."

But he was dying, and he knew it. An angel blade had pierced his chest.

And he thought, _I'm done. It's over. It's finished_.

To Sam . . _. oh God, Sammy! . . ._ he blurted, "I gotta say somethin'."

"Dean, you can avoid this."

That wasn't Sam. He knew it. Real-Sam was bearing him up, holding him close, keeping him on his feet. Walking him, though he wanted to collapse. Sam was murmuring words meant to strengthen him, the kind of words people said when they had no answers. Sam knew. Sam _knew_.

Sam stopped moving. Dean felt support, something he could lean against. He locked both hands into Sam's clothing, gripped as hard as was left within him. Managed to find the words, even as his understanding of language began to fail. He slurred the words, but he said them.

"I'm proud of us."

"Dean, " the not-Sam voice said, "none of this is necessary. You can end it now. You can begin again."

But he was falling. Falling.

Blackness.

No Sam.

And the next voice he heard, dragging him up from the depths, told him the life he felt now was different.

" _See_ what I see. _Feel_ what I feel. Let's go take a howl at that moon."

And he shouted, as long and as loud as possible, a refusal. Denial. He would not become that . . . that . . . _thing_.

"You had your chance," the voice said, "but you've never grabbed the brass ring when it's offered. Always with the scissors, Dean. Even when the game is very different."

But what he heard next was something he'd heard before.

Black eyes. Black black black.

_"You can't escape me, Dean. You're gonna die. And this? This is what you're gonna become!"_

* * *

"No!" Dean cried. "I can't—I can't—I _won't_ —"

They had a green light, but Sam slammed on the brakes just before the crosswalk. "Dean!"

"Nonononono!"

"Dean wait—Dean— _stop_ —"

Bobby was behind them in the middle lane. He stopped short of tapping the Impala, ran interference from other cars coming up in the lane.

But Dean was grabbing at the door handle, was yanking it back. That he did not fling open the door was solely because Sam had punched down the lock stem when he'd helped a slightly wobbly older brother into the passenger side of the car.

"Getoutgetoutgetout—" Dean chanted.

Sam reached over, grabbed a handful of Dean's shirt. He clutched it tightly in his fist. "No! Dean, stay with me . . . _stay with me_ —"

Dean flailed, but his arms were uncoordinated, without a selected target. And Sam blessed it, because his brother was capable of inflicting grievous bodily harm on anyone who got in his way.

Behind Bobby, cars honked. Even as Sam clung to Dean's shirt he was aware of Bobby out of his car, coming up on the passenger side; of planting his hands against the Impala and leaning down to look through the window. With the door locked, the window rolled up for air conditioning, there was nothing Bobby could do. Sam shot him a look of fear mixed with determination, and yanked Dean close.

"Stop it. _Stop_ it. You hear me? Dean— _you hear me_?"

Dean's body sagged back against the front seat. His head tipped, rolled slackly in the total abandonment of physical control. Sam saw Bobby register that; he gestured that they should continue on, and Bobby nodded, headed back to his car.

"Jesus," Sam muttered. "Dean, come on . . . stay with me. Dammit, just stay with me."

But Dean was gone. He breathed, his heart beat—Sam made sure of both—but he was _gone_.

Again.

* * *

He heard voices. Sam's. The raspy gravel of someone else. He registered that he lay atop a bed, was limp and sprawled and blind, eyes closed, but his ears worked.

Sam. "This is bad, Bobby. Do we take him back to the hospital?"

"What are they gonna find, kid? Scans are clear. I don't think this is medical. Which means we gotta research. I'll go to the library, make some calls . . . you go online."

"You said you've never heard of anything like this."

"That don't mean it don't _exist_ , Sam. There's lots we know, but as much—maybe more—we don't. It all comes down to experience, journals, and the lore . . . and even then, who's to say we know every monster that's out there? You keepin' up with your journal?"

"I do what I can."

"Dean?"

Hesitation. "He's never been much for writing stuff down."

"And just where does he think the lore comes from?—oh hell, never mind, boy. We got more on our plate to worry about than whether Dean's writing about his day in a diary."

And he knew, then, who the man was. The man with the gravel voice.

Dean lurched upright in bed, lifting heavy eyelids with all the strength he had in him as he hitched elbows under himself. "Bobby?"

Sam was perched on the end of his own bed. Bobby Singer was in a chair at the table. Both of them rose as one, shoving themselves upward. Also as one, they said, "Dean?"

Dean registered that his brother was at his right, swiveling from the end of the bed to take those two gigantic strides toward him. But Dean looked only at the older man. "Bobby?"

Something flickered in the narrow eyes surrounded by age-creased flesh. "You know me? Without a shotgun in my hand, I mean?"

Dean frowned at him. "That was years ago, Bobby. And Dad deserved it."

Sam hovered as only Sam could do, looming over his bed. "What do you remember?"

"That Dad was being an ass." But Dean closed his eyes, rubbed briefly at his forehead. "I think. Wasn't he? Dad could be an ass."

"That's not what I meant," Sam said.

Dean rubbed harder at his brow. "Damn . . ."

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"Nothin.' I'm fine." Dean squinted upward. "Stop looming, sasquatch. Hurts my head to look up so far."

Sam obligingly dropped to one knee beside the bed. "You have a headache?"

But Dean ignored him, looked at the older man at the end of his bed. "What are you doing here, Bobby?"

Bobby Singer's mouth twitched briefly. "Your brother called, said you'd gotten yourself in a little trouble out in the desert. What do you remember, son?"

"Chupacabra," Dean answered immediately. "We went out after it, and . . ."

"And?" Sam and Bobby prompted together.

But he was out of words. He stared at Sam, stared at Bobby, had nothing whatsoever to say. Could _find_ nothing whatsoever to say. And the room . . . the room _smelled_.

"Dean?" Sam shifted closer to the bed. "Dean, hey." Sam put his hand upon him. "Hey, you hear me?"

Decomp. He knew it well, from digging up graves.

The room reeked of it.

From a very great distance, Bobby said sharply, "That's a seizure."

Sam's voice was as sharp. "A seizure?"

"They're not all grand mal, Sam, like you see on TV and in the movies . . . some symptoms are very subtle. Dean? _Dean?_ Christ, boy, you hear me?"

"What do we do, Bobby?"

"Ride it out." Hands were on Dean now, pressing him back to the bed. "Is this what he was doing before?"

"Not exactly. But wouldn't the head scans have shown evidence of seizures?"

"Not if this is new. Dean—you hear me?"

And then his back arched tight as a bowstring, and his skull pressed against his pillow as fingers and toes curled up tightly.

"Don't let me go!" Dean cried. "Don't—"

"What?" Sam asked. "What's he saying?"

"Gibberish," Bobby said, closing his hands on either side of Dean's skull to hold it still. "Easy, boy. Easy, son. Won't last long. No reason to be afraid. Just go with it. Ride it. Sam's here. I'm here. We'll see you through it. "

 _Don't let me go._ _Never let me go_.

* * *

Corbin, again. Dr. James Corbin. But this time he took Sam and Bobby into his office, flipped on a lightbox attached to the wall, and gestured toward the scan images. With the end of his pen, he lightly tapped the films. "Here, and here. Definite seizure activity."

"But you said he was fine," Sam objected.

"No, I said I saw no evidence of problems in the initial scans," Corbin said. "And I didn't. These are images we took an hour ago, and things have changed."

Sam felt pressure building in his chest, tried to keep it out of his voice. "Changed _how_?"

"We're not certain yet," Corbin said. "But before you jump to conclusions, this is not epilepsy. Some form of seizure disorder, possibly—but it may be an isolated incident. We can't be certain. Not all seizures are linked to head injury, or disorders such as epilepsy. Some happen once, maybe twice, and never again. We'll put Mr. Cheney on anticonvulsant meds for a year, and that may be all that's necessary. Often seizures never recur. There is _no_ sign of a mass, no sign of head trauma. Sometimes this simply happens. We're going to admit him overnight, monitor him closely. Yes, it's worrisome—but you shouldn't assume the worst. Probably the most troublesome thing is that he can't drive for a year."

"What?" Sam blurted.

"We have to notify the MVD," Corbin said. "They'll pull his license for a year. You can't have someone out on the roads driving who may suffer a seizure at any time."

Sam looked at Bobby, whose squinted eyes and twisted mouth suggested he knew exactly how _not_ well this would go down with Dean.

"He'll be back in his room now," Corbin said. "You can go up and see him. He got a little combative again about the MRI, so they sedated him, but he's okay otherwise. I'll be in to see him later to answer any questions he may have, but there's no reason to withhold any of the information I've just given you." Corbin moved to the door, opened it with physical indications that it was time for them to go. "This happens sometimes. We don't always have the answers. As I said, there are mysteries in the world we simply can't answer."

Outside in the corridor, with the office door closed, Sam turned to Bobby. "He knows a hell of a lot about nothing."

"Or nothin' about a hell of a lot," Bobby agreed, resettling his cap. "Well, let's go up and see your brother. But I ain't lookin' forward to tellin' him he can't drive."

"We kind of don't have to," Sam said. "At least, not yet."

"That's a fact." Bobby nodded. "Maybe you can wait 'til I'm on the other side of the planet."

* * *

He rode the diminishing wave of sedation, aware that the edginess he always felt in a hospital was returning. He knew himself to be a terrible patient, but that was because he saw no sense in _being_ a patient. He and Sam could look after most things themselves; and what they couldn't tend, Bobby could. He was the best field medic Dean had ever seen.

He remembered what Bobby had said to him in the motel room. _"You know me? Without a shotgun in my hand, I mean?"_

Well, yeah. Of course he knew Bobby, with or without shotgun. He'd known Bobby almost all of his life, though true closeness hadn't come until he was an adult and hunting full time. Hell, Bobby had played catch with him on the day Dad had said Dean should practice shooting.

Why would he ever forget Bobby? And why did Bobby even think he could?

God, he hated that MRI machine. And the sedative they'd shot him up with twice. It wasn't necessary. If they just let him run things, he'd be fine.

Maybe what he needed to do was learn to pilot a plane, and then it wouldn't bother him to fly through the air at 35,000 feet and God knew how many miles an hour.

Crap. Why so high? Why so fast?

Dean closed his eyes and moaned.

His door opened. He expected a nurse, maybe a doctor. But no. Two men.

Dean smiled. "Hey, Bobby."

Bobby wasn't a man for giving away much in expressions, but a twitch flickered at the corners of his mouth. "Son."

Then Dean looked at the other, at the sasquatch-tall guy with long dark hair and shoulders out the wahzoo and, as he grinned, dimples deep as the Grand Canyon. "Still got a brain, doc says."

Frowning, Dean said, "Who are you?"

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

**~ NOW ~**

 

Sam felt a chill wash down from his scalp. This was not Dean rattling his cage just to get a rise out of him. The green eyes were too clear, too honest. Too suspicious.

Dean _didn't know_ him.

"Jesus," Bobby muttered. "This just keeps getting better n' better, don't it?"

Sam drew in a breath, treading carefully. "You remember Bobby as—well, real-time Bobby, not Bobby-with-a-shotgun—but you don't remember me?"

Against the pillow, Dean shook his head. "Should I?"

"Yeah, you should. I'm your brother."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "What scam are you running?"

Sam blinked at him. "Scam?"

"I don't have a brother."

"Dean—"

"I _had_ a brother. He died. So yeah, it's a scam."

So many words crowded onto Sam's tongue that he could say none of them. All he could do was stare at his brother, at the man who glared back at him out of angry, hostile eyes, and wish that they could somehow reset the entire week. He wished they were still in Utah, wished they had heard nothing at all about a damn chupacabra in Arizona, because then Dean would still be _Dean_ and he'd damn well know he had a younger brother who was alive and well and in the flesh and standing in front of him.

Despair was sudden and overwhelming. Mute, Sam turned on his heel, yanked open the door, and stumbled out into the hall. He stretched out his arms and braced himself against the far wall, head bowed. He felt sick to his stomach. His eyes burned.

And he was terrified.

"Sam." A comforting hand came against his shoulder. "Sam, lemme talk to him. Just—try to catch your breath, boy. His melon's all screwed, but we'll set it to rights. I'll talk to him. Why don't you go get some of that vending machine coffee that tastes like ass, maybe sit in the waiting room. I'll come find you."

Sam stood upright, turned, leaned his spine against the wall as he folded his arms tightly. "This is a freakin' _nightmare_ , Bobby."

"And we'll get through it. We always do. Now you go on and have that coffee, and I'll see what I can do." Bobby reached up, briefly clasped the side of Sam's neck. "Go on, Sam. Do as I say."

Sam did.

* * *

He was staring into the dregs of a truly terrible cup of coffee, sitting obediently in the waiting room, when Bobby appeared.

" _Sam_. What the hell happened to you?"

Sam's head snapped up. "What?"

Bobby scowled down at him. "Why would you do that to your brother? Jerkin' his chain, I get—you two are champions at doin' that to one another—but this wasn't screwin' with your brother . . . that was just low, Sam."

Bobby's anger was as startling as it was real. Sam stared at him blankly. "What are you talking about?"

"Why would you say such a thing?"

Sam was completely taken aback. "Why would I tell him I'm his brother?"

"No, you jackass. Dean's screwed in the custard and you go sayin' something like that? You called your brother a damn coward, Sam. An embarrassment, for bein' afraid of flying, bein' twitchy about an MRI. And you meant it. I heard you. You got a nasty tongue in your head, boy, when you decide to use it as a weapon."

Sam nearly gaped. "But Bobby, I _didn't_ say . . . Christ, I'd never say anything like that! Coward? _Dean_? What the hell are you talking—" But he broke it off abruptly. His scalp prickled. Sam leaned over, set the coffee cup on the floor with trembling fingers. His breath ran fast as he straightened and gazed up at Bobby. Intently he asked, "Does Dean know I'm his brother?"

Bobby stared at him in bafflement. "Of course he knows you're his brother, you nimrod!"

"Bobby." Sam rose, placed a hand against Bobby's chest, tried to assemble thoughts and words that made sense in the midst of a morass of misunderstandings. "We walked into the room, and Dean didn't know me. Do you remember that? Do you remember him saying it was a scam, that I couldn't be his brother because his brother was dead?"

"What the hell are you talkin' about, Sam? No, I don't remember that, because it didn't happen." And then realization transformed Bobby's face from irritated puzzlement to startled comprehension. "Jesus Christ. You, too."

"Yeah," Sam said intently. "You remember one thing, Bobby. I remember another. And it feels real, but only one way is right. Is the truth." He drew in a breath, tapped his temple with a forefinger. "It's false memories. Or created reality, like with a djinn. Or wraith poison causing crazy-making hallucinations. Or even . . . maybe even something like Jeremy and the African dream root. Or, _crap_ , none of the above!" He scraped hands through his hair. "Jesus, Bobby—it's like we're stuck in a Foreigner song."

"What?"

"'Head Games.'" Sam stared hard at Bobby in realization, felt his body shift into pre-movement tension. "I gotta see Dean. He's probably pissed at me for what I said. For what you _say_ I said, that I know I didn't say, but that _Dean_ believes I said, because . . . " Sam clutched at his head. "This is too frickin' confusing!"

"Well, he wasn't best pleased about what you said, no," Bobby agreed. "More like stunned, I'd say, rather than pissed. It sure shut him up in a hurry. Not easy to stop him dead in his tracks like that, especially when he's still a little loopy." Bobby hitched a shoulder in a half-shrug. "'Course now he's had a little time to work up a head of steam. Guess we'd better go. And spring him from here while we're at it, because ain't no doctor gonna be able to figure out an answer to _this._ "

But when they reached Dean's room, he was neither pissed nor loopy.

He was missing.

* * *

He might be screwed in the head, he might have somehow lost time, but that, _that_ experience he remembered. Every minute of it. Every frightening, painful moment. And after what had just happened, he was there all over again.

He crouched before the door, heard Sam moving behind him. And a flat, cold tone unlike any he'd heard from his brother before.

"Step back from the door."

Dean turned, pushed himself to his feet. Looked from the shotgun in his brother's hands to his face. A trickle of blood issued from his nose, painted his upper lip.

Dean drew in a careful breath, standing very, very still. "Sam, put the gun down."

Sam's head twitched. "Is that an order?"

With someone else, Dean might have moved. Might have ducked, twisted, then leaped. But not with Sam. His brother was young, but he'd still been trained by John Winchester. Hell, he'd been trained by _him_.

"Nah," he said lightly. "It's more of a friendly request."

Sam lifted the gun so that the two barrels pointed directly at Dean's chest. "'Cause I'm getting pretty tired of taking your orders."

Crap. Oh, crap. "I knew it. Ellicott did something to you."

Sam's eyes were cold. Heartless. "For once in your life, shut your mouth."

Dean chanced a half-smile. "What are you gonna do, Sam? Gun's filled with rock salt. It's not gonna kill me."

And he realized, even as he said it, that Sam was going to do it.

He heard the blast, felt the concussion of it, the sudden breath-stealing pressure against his chest, the collision with the door behind him, and the smashing journey through shattering wood. He hit the floor hard, very hard on his back, chest ablaze.

The world blinked away, then came back. He clung to consciousness, knew he could not afford to let go. He gasped, sucking in air. "Sam!"

And Sam was right there. He'd fired only one barrel. The other, with a second load of rock salt, would do additional damage.

Breathing hard, Dean said, "We gotta burn Ellicott's bones and all this will be over, and you'll be back to normal."

Sam gazed down at him, a half-smile on his face. "I am normal. I'm just telling the truth for the first time. I mean, why are we even here? 'Cause you're following Dad's orders like a good little solider? Because you always do what he says without question? Are you that desperate for his approval?

"This isn't you talking, Sam."

"That's the difference between you and me. I have a mind of my own. I'm not _pathetic_ , like you."

Dean knew what was going on. He knew it was Ellicott in his brother's head. But who was to say the man, deranged as he might have been, couldn't reach the innermost thoughts of a young man who never intended to be a hunter?

Dean lay very still. "So what are you gonna do, huh? Are you gonna kill me?"

Sam's eyes narrowed. "You know what? I am sick of doing what you tell me to do. We're no closer to finding Dad today than we were six months ago."

Dean had to find some way through the thicket of confusion inside his brother's head. "Well, then here. Let me make it easier for you." With great care, he pulled the Smith & Wesson from his jacket and offered it. "Come on. Take it. Real bullets are gonna work a hell of a lot better than rock salt." Sam hesitated. "Take it!"

Sam took it. Pointed it directly at his brother's face.

Utter despair threatened to swamp him. It hurt so badly he ached inside as much as he did from the rock salt. "You hate me that much? You think you could kill your own brother?" He swallowed tightly. "Then go ahead. Pull the trigger. Do it!"

And Sam did. Once. Again. Again.

Dean survived because the gun was unloaded.

And now? Now Sam had stood there and accused him of being an embarrassment. Of being a _coward_.

When Sam was gone, when Bobby, swearing a blue streak, had gone after him, Dean lay stunned in the bed. The last vestiges of sedation were washed away on a wave of shock so profound it shook Dean to his core.

The expression in Sam's eyes, the coldness in his tone, had been the same as in the asylum all those years before.

Christ. He wasn't staying here. Not a minute longer.

He yanked back the covers, dropped out of bed, stripped off the thin gown and dressed in street clothes: jeans, tee, socks, boots. Button-down shirt to hide the gun he didn't currently carry, but no jacket, because it was summer in Arizona and too friggin' hot. Wallet. Keys. A handful of change. Not much a man could call his own. But it was enough.

Let Bobby deal with Sam. For this moment in time, at least for a day, maybe two—hell, maybe a month of Sundays—Dean was done with it.

Embarrassment.

 _Coward_.

And Sam had meant it. Just like he'd meant it in Ellicott's asylum.

Dean knew his brother better than he knew himself. Because when it came to himself, he always backed away. No emo self-analysis. No interior head-shrinking. No dwelling on what made him tick. His moral compass was skewed, he knew, compared to most, but he'd never questioned why he did what he did.

But with Sam, it was different. He'd spent a lot of time, right after Sam's departure for Stanford, trying to figure out why his baby brother was so different. Oh, he'd defended Sam's choice to their father, even believed in Sam's choice—but he didn't understand it. And so he thought about it, rolled it around in his head, and analyzed the kid the way he refused to self-analyze, and figured him out. He knew what made his brother tick, and how he thought.

Ellicott had screwed with the kid.

But this . . . this wasn't Ellicott. This was _Sam_.

Dean walked out of the hospital and left his brother behind.

* * *

Just inside the door, Sam stopped dead and stared at the bed. Empty, covers pulled back, gown dropped in a pile of cloth. The first thing he did was check the bathroom, but it, too, was empty. No Dean. No Dean anywhere.

"Dammit," he muttered. "He wanted me to leave him the keys. Said he felt safer with them in his jeans than with me. He'll go for the car."

"You think he'll leave?" Bobby asked.

"Hell yeah. If I said he was an embarrassment, called him a _coward_ , he's not sticking around. " He paused, looked at Bobby. "I really said that?"

"I heard you."

Sam shook his head. "I never would. I _never would_ , Bobby!"

"But you did."

_"I don't remember it."_

"Let's find your brother and get the hell out of here." Bobby opened the door. "He knows he's not right in the head, kid. Now we've got some ideas, maybe a lead or two into what's going on. He'll listen to reason . . . once we let him have his say."

"And maybe break my nose," Sam muttered, passing Bobby on the way out of the room.

* * *

Dean didn't remember where the Impala was parked, because he'd been riding shotgun, not driving—and he had a hazy recollection that he wasn't necessarily all together in his head when they arrived. Bobby'd said something about a seizure. But it didn't take long to spot the lady in black sitting across the main driveway in visitor parking not far from the main entrance.

Christ, but it was hot. Blinding bright. Every time they came to the Southwest Dean recalled the infamous saying: _But it's a dry heat_. And it was true, every word of it; and it did make a difference, because you could breathe freely even when it was 115 degrees, and sweat a little, maybe, and feel the sear in the lungs; but it was nothing like drowning in high humidity, working to find oxygen in the saturated air of the Midwest, the South. In Arizona, people put on shorts and flip-flops in February, when half the country was still shivering and buried in snow.

He hoped Sam had remembered to crack the windows. He hoped the a/c was up to snuff. He hoped he wouldn't be fried like an egg upon the sidewalk when he climbed into the car.

"Dean! Dean—wait!"

Sam. Of course. Coming out of the entrance.

"Dean!"

Dean tossed his brother a quick, slashing glance across his shoulder as he stepped off the sidewalk onto the main entrance drive, just so Sam knew he heard his call, then turned, took two strides onto asphalt.

_"Dean!"_

And some asshole driving away ran smack into him.

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

  **~ NOW ~**

Dean was fairly certain he'd been hit harder by women than by a car that resembled a toaster. But then, usually the women who hit him were possessed by demons, or were vengeful spirits, or ghosts, or any number of other violent beings, so they packed a pretty mean punch. The toaster, as far as he knew, was not possessed, and probably its driver wasn't, either, because the guy had leaped out and instantly run around to the squared-off nose of the car, then stood there flapping his arms rather than punching or kicking or hurling Dean into another county.

"MyGodmyGodmyGod . . . you were just there. You were just there, and then you were here, and now you're _here_. OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod."

"Dean. _Dean_!"

Dean squinted against a headache. No, that wasn't the guy driving the toaster. That was Sam.

Oh yeah. He was angry with Sam—about . . . something. Right now he couldn't put a finger on it; but then, he often couldn't sort out the bits and pieces that annoyed him about his baby brother. Sometimes it was just because Sam _was_ his baby brother. Emphasis being on 'baby.'

But much as he wanted to reflect on his brother's severe shortcomings and why he was truly pissed off at said brother, Dean realized he was lying on the ground. On asphalt. On black asphalt beneath an Arizona sun. In summer.

"Yaaahh!" he cried, and tried to lurch upright, to levitate onto booted feet. One hand pressed against asphalt, trying to shove himself upright.

"Stay down." Sam's big hands were on him, pushing him back. "Just stay put. Bobby's gone for help."

"Get off me! Lemme up! Jesus, Sam, let go of me!"

"Dean, just stay down," Sam insisted. "Did you hit your head?"

"Sam, get off . . . crap, let me up!"

And the driver again, crying out shrilly. "Oh my God! He was there, and then he was _here_!"

"Dean, you just got hit by a car."

"I know I got hit by a car, you moron, but it's frickin' _hot_ down here!" Dean flailed, caught hold of one of Sam's arms, yanked it downward and pressed his brother's palm against the asphalt. "See?"

Sam blinked and his brows shot up. "Oh."

"Yeah, 'oh.' Now let me up—" Dean tried to gather limbs and undertake a successful upward motion. "Sam—a little help?"

"You just got hit by a _car_ , dude. Take it easy."

"I'm fine, Sam. I'm fan-frickin'-tastic. I just want off of this freaky-hot asphalt before it fries my delicate white _ASS_ -phalt. Phalt, not fault. With an 'a,' not an 'au.' My ass is not faulty. Ass-perfection."

Finally, _finally_ , Sam seemed to understand. It was help his brother up under some kind of controlled, guided aid, or a very recent car accident victim might well do worse harm to himself in the midst of frantic struggles to get up from hot-as-blazes blacktop.

With Sam's help, Dean did make it to his feet. He winced, bent a little against nascent pain, tried not to wobble. He fixed the driver with the dirtiest stink-eye he could manage in the midst of supreme discomfort. "What the hell were you thinking?"

The man stopped flapping his arms. "That I had the right of way."

Dean glared. " _I_ had the right of way, asshole."

"No, actually you were jaywalking." The driver pointed. "The crosswalk's over there. You stepped out in front of me." He paused. "And I'm a lawyer."

"Well, so's my brother," Dean gritted; then realized somewhat belatedly that the claim probably wouldn't hold up in court. "Well, kind of a pre-lawyer. He took his el-SAPs."

"SATs," Sam interjected, with precise enunciation. "LSATs. With a 'T' . . . Dean, can you just shut up? We've got to get you back inside. Where you're a _patient_ , remember?"

The driver was horrified. "A patient? I hit a patient?" Then he revised. "I hit a patient who stepped off the curb right in front of my car while he was jaywalking."

"I'm fine, Sam."

"He's fine," claimed the driver-lawyer fervently. "He says he's fine. I was only going maybe five miles per hour. Probably more like three."

"You knocked him _over_ ," Sam pointed out. "Three won't cut it. Probably not even five. Maybe _ten_."

Dean thought, _I got knocked over by a toaster. A Japan-frickin'-ese toaster._

Sam, impatience clearly getting the better of him, said with explicit clarity, "Someone just took a photo of your license plate. I suggest you leave your insurance information with the front desk. We'll be in touch." To Dean, he said, "Come on. Bobby's back, and he's got a wheelchair. Let's put the perfection of your delicate white ass into it."

Dean, seriously wanting to know the answer even as he was force-folded down into the wheelchair, queried the world at large, "What kind of a lawyer drives a toaster?"

"Jesus Christ," Sam muttered.

"Jesus Christ drives a toaster?" Then Dean winced and put a hand to his head. "Sammy—I think I'm a little confused."

Sam was turning the wheelchair. "Right about now?—I think we all are."

* * *

"Oh look!" said the medtech. "It's you again."

Dean lay very still on the MRI table. His head ached abominably, and movement would make it worse. "Me again what?"

"The guy who thinks the MRI machine is an airplane. Usually people say it looks like something out of _Star Wars_ , or the space shuttle. But nobody other than you has ever wanted to fly it. Because it doesn't. Fly, I mean. Look, I'll get the nurse, we'll sedate you again."

"No!" Dean snapped. "No drugs. I'm fine."

"But why make it hard on yourself? No reason to get in an uproar, when we've got pharmaceuticals that smooth out the edges." The tech smiled down on him. "It's why they invented them. Hang on. Be back in a jiff."

"Nonono . . . I don't want any—"

But the tech was gone, and shouting just made Dean's head ache worse. Damn. Maybe the toaster hit him harder than he thought. Everything hurt. He raised an arm, inspected the heel of his hand for asphalt burns. Nope. A little road rash, though.

He was back in the stupid gown again. Dean hated them. Though at least this one tied at the side, not behind, which meant the barn door wasn't open and he didn't moon the world. Though possibly the world might thank him if he did. He'd been told by plenty of women he had one sweet ass.

Which reminded him of Sam and the conversation they'd shared outside in the street in front of a toaster-on-wheels. What kind of a car _was_ that, for Christ's sake? Ugly mo-fo, is what it was. Not even a car. Now Baby, _Baby_ was a car. Baby was a work of art. Hell, he didn't even mind pouring $50 or more into her gas tank whenever they stopped to fill up, because she was worth every penny. Baby was perfection—

"Here we are." The tech was back. "The usual drill. Not as much as usual, because I'm told you got your noodle cooked, but enough to take the edge off."

"I'd really rather not—" But Dean felt the prick of the needle, and it didn't matter what he wanted.

"Look," said the tech, "I'm just giving you a hard time. Sorry about that, buddy. But we try to find ways that will take a nervous patient's mind off of what's going on. So just relax. It's the same old/same old."

Dean said, "It is not the same old/same old. It's the frickin' Millennium Falcon. And I could _so_ fly that sucker."

"Sure, buddy. You're Han Solo himself."

"Damn straight."

* * *

This time, Sam and Bobby were allowed to wait in Dean's room rather than in the lobby, since he'd actually been admitted. There had been some official questions about why Dean had departed the hospital, especially as he'd subsequently been hit by a car, but Sam explained that his brother had been very confused after being sedated for an MRI and didn't know what he was doing.

Which, he reflected, was pretty much the truth.

So Bobby sat in the chair beside Dean's empty bed, and Sam paced. Sam was pacing when the door opened and Dr. Corbin entered.

Corbin was smiling. "Your brother will be up shortly. In the meantime, I must say that Mr. Cheney has an active imagination."

Sam stared at him, wondering if Dean, in the haze of sedatives, had said anything about demons or ghosts or possessed grandfather clocks. "What?"

"I'm told he claimed he could make the Kessel run in under _ten_ parsecs."

Bobby growled it. "He said _what?_ "

Sam waved the question away. "He hasn't lost it, Bobby. It's a _Star Wars_ reference."

"And you," Corbin indicated Sam with a finger, "have been described as having enough hair to rival Chewbacca."

"I do not!" Sam claimed indignantly. Then he turned to Bobby, abruptly worried. "Is this real?"

The doctor was clearly baffled. "What?"

Crap. That was about the stupidest thing a man could say in front of a neurologist. "Never mind," Sam blurted hastily. "What about my brother?"

"Your brother appears to be fine," Corbin said. "The ER attending physician said he'll have bumps and bruises, and he's got a very mild concussion, but no real damage done. As a neurologist I'm not pleased he struck his head, particularly in view of the seizure he experienced earlier, but we'll monitor, as I already explained, and see how things proceed. From your description and the evidence, the seizure was mild. It's possible a bump on the head might trigger another episode, but there's no certainty of that. We've got him on anticonvulsants now."

Sam nodded. "When can he leave? We've got . . . well, we've got some things we need to get done for our job."

Corbin smiled. "The scans are clear. If there are no episodes, no complications overnight, we'll cut him loose tomorrow. He'll need to rest, let the headache settle down, but other than not driving or drinking, he's free to do whatever he's comfortable with."

Sam thanked him, watched him depart, then turned to Bobby. "Can I join you on the other side of the planet?"

Bobby frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"Now we've got to tell him he can't drive _or_ drink."

"' _We_ ' don't have to do anything," Bobby said. "It's all on you, Sam."

The single word Sam used was not remotely polite.

* * *

** ~ 2000 ~  
**

"Listen to me, Dean. Your brother's a strong kid. Your brother's a _good_ kid. I've done what I can, but he's not like you. He's not like me."

"I know that, Dad."

"He's more like your mother than you ever were. I made you into a soldier, Dean. Because that's what I needed. And I hope one day you can forgive me for that."

"Dad—what are you saying?"

"Because the day will come when I'm not there, Dean. It'll be you and Sammy. I'm not going out sitting on a porch in a rocking chair. That's just not how it happens for hunters. I won't be there, and it'll be you and Sammy against all the monsters. But Sam . . . hell, he's learned. He knows the moves. He's a damn good shot. But—"

"He's not soft, Dad!"

"No, Dean. I wasn't going to say he was soft. He's not. But he thinks too much. He needs to _react_ , he needs to run on autopilot. That's what soldiers do. He needs to stop thinking—or else he needs to think faster."

"Think faster?"

"Faster than his opponent."

"Sammy's smart, Dad. Real smart."

"Your brother is _brilliant_ , Dean. I think he's probably a frickin' genius, as those things are measured. Or so a couple of teachers have said. But that can be dangerous in our line of work. You've either got to not think at all, only react . . . or else be five steps ahead of the enemy. Sam's got that in him, but he doesn't know how to use it. And it's up to you to bring it out in him."

"Me?"

"Everything changed, Dean. Almost seventeen years ago, everything changed. You can be damn sure I'd rather be playing catch with you and Sam, shooting hoops in the driveway, taking you fishing, showing you how to barbeque . . . but that life ended. I'm sorry, Dean. You lost your childhood. I know that. I know what I did. And it hurts to know what I did . . . to know how I took two kids who deserved the best, and I gave them the worst."

"Dad . . . that's the booze talking."

"Yeah. Yeah, it is. But it's me, too, kiddo. It's me. I did what I felt—hell, what I _knew_ —needed to be done. Because there's a storm coming, son. And if you're not careful, it'll swallow Sam whole."

"Dad?"

"Look after your brother, Dean. I won't be there to do it. And he's always listened to you more than to me anyway."

"Dad, what are you saying?"

"Look after your brother."

"Yeah, Dad. You know I always do."

* * *

**~ NOW ~ **

"Hey, buddy. Hey. Come on. It's over. Wake up."

Dean unstuck his eyes. He was flat on his back on the MRI table, out of the massive machine, and the tech was gazing down on him with worry limning his features in place of professional cheerfulness.

"Come on, buddy. It's okay. Everything's okay. We'll get you up to your room."

Dean said, "What?"

"Look, don't worry about it. I'll let the doc know. Right now, we'll just get you back up to your room, let you relax. 'kay?"

"What?"

"You made the Kessel run in under _ten_ parsecs, buddy. Your father would be proud of you."

"He doesn't know." Dean closed his eyes. "Dad's dead. I didn't save Sammy. He went to hell. And I helped him jump."

 


	8. Chapter 8

**~ NOW ~  
**

Always the eyes, with Dean. He raised impenetrable walls, could mask his face to anyone who didn't know him well, but Sam knew him exceedingly well and had learned the language of Dean Winchester decades before. It just took him growing up to figure out how to translate every word, every nuance.

As the orderly pushed the wheelchair through the door, Sam saw Dean look at him briefly, then away. But it wasn't the kind of avoidance someone used when they were submissive, or lying, or uncomfortable. It was a shift of gaze that meant Dean didn't want Sam to see beneath his mask, to look behind his walls. Because Dean had figured out eventually that it took tremendous effort to truly mislead Sam, and he wasn't currently in shape to do so. Dean was hurting from being knocked down, even if the car hadn't actually been going that fast; and he was still riding the fumes of a sedative; and he'd suffered a seizure. Not to mention heat exhaustion and severe dehydration a matter of days before. Plus whatever the hell it was screwing with his memory.

Screwing with his _mind_.

Predictably, Dean told the orderly to get off him, to not touch the goods, as the guy parked the wheelchair beside the bed and hit the brake lever. Before anyone could help, Dean levered himself up, turned, and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. He shot Bobby a glance, a second one at Sam, but held his tongue until the orderly wheeled the chair out of the room and closed the door behind him.

"Listen to me—" Sam began, intending to get in the first word.

Dean overrode him. "I want out of here. I don't give a rat's ass what they say might be going on with me _medically_ , because they don't know a damn thing."

Bobby nodded. "Tomorrow. They'll cut you loose then. Doc said so."

"Now."

"Not until you listen to me," Sam insisted. "Dean, dammit, it's got me, too. Whatever this is."

Dean frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"Bobby told me what I said. I don't remember it. _I don't remember it_ , Dean. My memories are completely different from Bobby's. They brought you back from the head scan, right here to this room, and you didn't recognize me. You told me you didn't have a brother, because he had died. That I was running some kind of scam."

Dean looked at Bobby, who tilted his head in assent. Then he locked eyes with Sam again. "Why the hell would I say that?"

"Why the hell would I call you a coward?" Sam retorted. "The last thing on earth my big brother would ever be, _could_ ever be, is a coward. I'd _never_ say such a thing, Dean. Not me. Not me in my right mind."

"Oh, you've said some pretty choice things in your time—"

Sam gestured sharply to cut him off. "Do you really want to play 'He said, He said' for the rest of the afternoon?" He cast a glance around, spotted the other chair, dragged it over and sat close beside Bobby, resting elbows on his knees as he leaned forward intently. "Look, something's screwing with us. Something's taking our memories and turning them inside out, or removing them entirely, maybe even implanting new ones. Something happened out there in the desert that night. All I remember is dropping when you shouted, the shotgun going off over my head, and when I looked up, you were gone."

Dean knitted his brows, then shook his head to indicate he had no memory of what Sam described.

"I remember spending the night in the car, and searching for you, finding you, taking you back to the hotel, " Sam continued. "For two days— _two days_ , Dean—you lay there on the bed staring at the ceiling, hardly even blinking. It was like you'd checked out. And then one morning when I woke up, you were perfectly fine . . . but missing five years." Sam shrugged. "The only time period _I'm_ missing is being here in this room with you and Bobby, and saying something I'd never say. Not in my right mind." He drew in a breath and let the full range of his emotions into his tone for the first time, hoping Dean would accept the truth. " _Not unless something screwed with me, too."_

Bobby cleared his throat. "Sam mentioned a few possibilities. Djinn creating an alternate reality; you've gone up-close-and-personal with that dance. But there was also the wraith when you two went to help Martin in the mental hospital. You told me she caused hallucinations. And there was Jeremy, too, and the African dream root, when you two took a hike inside my melon to pop me out of that coma. Remember?"

Dean considered it, twisted his mouth briefly in doubt. "We were in the middle of the frickin' desert, Bobby. No ruins. No buildings. Not a soul around. Just a helluva a lot of cactus and a big old full moon. I don't get any sense of a djinn. Or anything else." He scrubbed at a thicket of short-cropped hair. "I'm drawing a blank."

" _Something_ was there," Bobby insisted quietly. "Because you shot at it. When's the last time _you_ shot at something that don't exist, son?"

Scowling, Dean rubbed at his brow. "Damn. They keep doping me for those scans . . . I can't think." After a moment he met Sam's eyes again. "We need to go back out there."

Sam nodded. "But we're losing the moon. We can't recreate the same conditions."

Dean conceded that. "But there's this awesome invention called a flashlight, Einstein."

And Sam knew he was forgiven. Even if he didn't remember saying anything that needed forgiveness, he was still glad to have it, under the CYA column.

"Tomorrow night," he said, mentally girding his loins for the anticipated argument. "Doc wants to monitor you overnight, make sure everything's copacetic. Give him that much, okay? Look what happened the last time you walked out of the hospital AMA. You got hit by a car."

Dean scowled. "Frickin' toaster."

"It was a Honda Element, dude. Pretty cool vehicle, actually."

"Jesus, Sam—you sit shotgun in a gorgeous ride like the Impala, and you can admire a fugly thing like that?"

"I can." Sam smiled. "They designed it for college guys my height, not short-buses like you."

Dean gave him stink-eye. "I'll remember you said that." He paused, brows knitting. "I think."

Then a nurse arrived, cheerfully announcing it was time for Dean to be hooked up to various monitors, and while Sam saw his brother open his mouth to suggest otherwise, he also saw Dean register that the nurse was male, was nearly Sam's height, and probably outweighed both of them by a fair amount. Arms exposed by short scrub sleeves were toned and massive.

He displayed white teeth in a chocolate-colored face. "That's right. News travels fast when a guy's being combative. And Freddie, the MRI tech, is a friend of mine, so no wimpy little nurses for you. Now, how about you just lie back, let me attach all the leads, make sure everything's working, and you and I will be BFFs." He stepped close to Dean, rested a big hand on his shoulder in casual camaraderie weighted with promises. "Sound good to you?"

Dean wiggled eyebrows, broke into one of his patented, megawatt, shit-eating grins. "Why, sure thing, dude. I was just considering I'd take a little nap, get my beauty sleep." He shot a glance at Sam. "Since I'm stuck here for the night, why don't you and Uncle Bobby go out for some grub, go back to the motel while Mike Tyson hooks me up. Since _I'm stuck here_ , I'm going to do some thinking. Thinking about— _possibilities and potentials_ , you know? We'll compare notes tomorrow morning."

The nurse laughed, caught Dean's legs and swung them up onto the bed with such powerful ease Dean nearly tipped over. "Mike Tyson, huh? And here I was thinking I'm Apollo Creed. But at least you got the sport right. Name's Abraham, by the way. Abraham Nightengale."

Dean blurted, "You gotta be shittin' me."

"NightENgale," the big nurse said. "With an 'e' and an 'n.' Not like Florence. Don't call me Florence."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Dean offered with fervent assurance.

"Are you sure?" Sam asked. "Tomorrow morning?"

Dean flapped a hand. "Go on. I know you want to channel surf, play some DVDs. Okay by me. We'll talk in the morning."

Sam interpreted that easily: _Go to the motel, get online, do what you have to do. I'll stay put._

"Okay. Tomorrow morning, first thing." Sam followed Bobby to the door, but couldn't keep himself from looking back at his brother as the nurse began to pull machines up around the bed, uncoil leads, pull tapes off the electrodes. Dean was talking up a storm, doing everything he could to deflect attention from himself, but from the expression on Abraham's smiling face the big guy knew exactly what Dean was doing.

Just as Sam knew what Dean was doing, trying to hide from his brother just how much he hated being tied to a hospital bed.

Planes. MRI scanners. Hospital leads and cables and tubing.

It was too easy, and utterly wrong, to describe what Dean felt as fear. Because it wasn't. Not fear as others experienced. For Dean, it was losing the ability to move as he needed to move, to react in an unencumbered fashion to anything he viewed as a potential or active threat.

You can't save the world if you're not physically free to do so.

Sam let the door swing closed behind him. "'You don't tug on Superman's cape.'"

"What, Sam?"

"Nothing, Bobby. Just a line from a song."

' _And you don't mess around with Dean_.'

* * *

Dean tried to turn over, felt the pull of leads and electrodes attached to his brow even as the BP cuff on his bicep began its tedious, noisy inflation/measurement/deflation cycle, which always woke him up.

While sleeping on his back was normal for him, he also frequently slept on his belly with one hand tucked under the pillow near his Bowie knife. How many times tonight had he awakened attempting to turn over so he could sleep again face-down, hand under the pillow? Too many times to count.

"Crap," he muttered, very tempted to peel electrodes off his head, to rid himself of wires and leads and cables. He felt like a damn space shuttle feeding telemetry back to Houston.

He shifted in bed again. He had no clue what time it was, save that it was dark outside his window, and too dark in the room to read the wall clock. His internal system suggested sometime after eleven, maybe.

He heard someone come into the room. He tensed, pushed himself more upright against piled pillows. "Yeah?"

"Mr. Cheney? Hey, man, it's just me. Abraham. Your nurse. As in, not Florence."

Dean heard the sound of a big body approaching, leaning, and then the light over the bed was switched on. He winced against it expecting to be blinded, but it was soft illumination. Dean blinked up at the nurse.

"I'm just checking on you," Abraham explained, stepping back. "They found a squib on your EKG reading."

Dean frowned up at him. "'Squib?'"

Abraham grinned. "Yeah, that's a highly technical term. Just means your brainwaves did a little hop/skip/jump. Were you dreaming?"

Maybe. But, "Not that I can remember."

"Dreams can do that," the nurse explained. "Heart rate goes up, brain activity increases . . . happens to all of us. But since you had a seizure, we've got to check when it occurs. And I've brought your meds."

"Meds? What meds?" Dean tensed. "I'm not going back in the scanner, am I?"

"No, man. The EKG's enough. If that's clear, no need for an MRI. Though you do amuse Freddie." Abraham smiled, displayed a small paper cup holding two pills. "Dilantin, man. Simple anticonvulsant. Used all the time."

Dean eyed the small cup with suspicion. "Look, I had heat exhaustion a few days ago. Core temp was up, which may have been the trigger. Doc said I don't have epilepsy or any kind of seizure disorder. One-time thing, you know? No need for drugs."

The nurse lifted one hand, palm out, fingers spread. "No prob, man. It's not my job to force anything on you. I mean, hey, you got a medical degree, that's good enough for me. I'll just note it on your chart: _'Dr. Cheney, despite a head injury, elected to forgo the advice of his neurologist.'"_

"Uh- _huh_ ," Dean said skeptically. "Does this work for you much? Playing head games with your patients?"

"Yeah, it usually does." Abraham smiled ruefully, shrugged massive shoulders. "Just doing my job."

"I'm not taking those pills, Apollo."

"That's cool. No skin off my nose. But I do have to note it on your chart."

"Then note it," Dean told him. "Need me to sign anything? AMA form, maybe?"

Abraham looked interested. "You know about those?"

"Yeah, I know about those."

"Huh." The big nurse studied him. "I'll bet you do. I know the type."

Dean's brows ran up. "I'm a 'type?'"

" _Oh_ yeah," Abraham said, grinning. "Tough guy. Macho man. Wouldn't say . . . well, _excrement . . ._ if you broke both his arms and a leg. Nah, he'd just limp out of the room claiming he was fine, just fine; no problem; too far from his heart to kill him. Am I right?"

And Dean, who had done that, had said all of those words, scowled at the man. "All of my limbs are intact. No drugs."

Abraham raised the broad palm again. "Hey man, it's on you. It's your broken brain, not mine. You're getting out of here tomorrow, anyway." He set down the pill cup, grabbed the chart at the end of the bed, wrote something on it, tucked the pen back into his scrub shirt pocket. "'night, man. It's been real. I'm off shift in an hour, so good luck to you."

After Abraham departed, Dean noted the nurse had left the pill cup on the rolling bedside table. He smiled thinly, recognizing the ploy, and did not take the contents.

"Screw you," he muttered and, damning the EKG leads and any subsequent alarms, turned over onto his side. "My brain ain't broken."

* * *

 Sam woke up with a start when his cell rang. Physically, he always roused quickly because of years of hunting, but when in a motel room, so often shared with his brother, his brain did not always instantly engage. So it took him a moment to register that he had fallen asleep at the table, head pillowed on one forearm, laptop beside his ear.

Crap. That always gave him a monstrous crick in his neck.

He grabbed the phone, pressed the screen, fumbled it to his ear. "Yeah?"

"Mr. Cheney? Sam Cheney?"

A woman's voice, bland and professional. He blinked hard. "Yeah?"

"This is the Mayo Clinic, in Phoenix. I'm calling to tell you that your brother has left the hospital."

Sam sat bolt upright. "What?"

"Your brother, Dean Cheney, has left the hospital."

"He checked himself out?"

"Not exactly."

"He did the AMA thing?"

"No. No forms. He's just—not here. The nurse went in to check on him, and he's disappeared. "

"His clothing, belongings?"

"Gone," she said. "It looks like he simply walked out. But you have to understand—it's not what we'd advise. He was under a doctor's care."

"Yeah, yeah. I know. I understand." Adrenaline charged through Sam's body, awakening all synapses and muscle fibers. " _Crap_. Oh, sorry. Okay. Are you looking for him?"

"Of course, sir. Security has been alerted. But we wanted to inform you right away, in case he got in touch with you. You do understand . . . he was being treated for a head injury. And his chart says he walked away from the hospital yesterday."

 _Yes, he does that_ , Sam wanted to say. "Okay. Thanks."

"If he finds you, or you find him, we'd advise that he be returned," the woman said. "It's really not safe for an unmedicated seizure risk to be without supervision."

Sam blinked. "Unmedicated?"

"He refused it. It's in his chart. Sir—is it likely he'll contact you?"

"Yeah. Probably. I'm his brother."

"Then we would advise you to bring him back, sir."

"Okay. Yeah. I will." Sam paused. "He has a cell. Did anyone try to call him?"

"Of course, sir. But it went straight to voicemail."

"All right. Um, thanks. I'll try him myself."

"Sir—we did have to contact the police."

" _What?_ "

"The police. It's protocol when a patient goes missing. I mean, he certainly wouldn't be _arrested_ , but the police would try to detain him. For his own good."

Sam's breath ran hard. "I understand. Um—my brother's a veteran, okay? Sometimes he suffers from PTSD. So if he seems a little combative, that's why. Okay? Just—if the police find him, have them call me. Understand?"

"Of course, sir."

"Thanks," Sam said, and disconnected. "Dammit. Dammitdammit _dammit_." He rose swiftly, collected his gun and tucked it into the back of his jeans, snatched open the door. He walked two doors to his right, banged on wood beneath the numeral. " _Bobby!_ "

After a moment, Bobby jerked open the door. Without his habitual ball cap, his thinning red-gray hair was mussed. "What?"

"Dean's gone."

"Gone?"

"The hospital called. He's gone."

" _Again?"_ Then Bobby's expression shifted. He looked beyond Sam's shoulder. "No, actually, he's not exactly gone. Gone from _there_ , maybe. Or else his clone is standing at the Impala's open trunk. Don't that look like your brother to you?"

Sam spun. And yes, there was the Impala, there was the open trunk, and there was his brother, digging through the contents.

"Dean!" Relief rushed through him; Dean wasn't missing after all. "What the hell, dude? What are you doing?"

But as Sam reached the car, saw his brother's face in the dim glow of the trunk light, he realized that maybe Dean wasn't _truly_ present after all. That he was, maybe, elsewhere.

"Sonuvabitch," Sam said, wanting more than anything to hear Dean say it.

But Dean didn't. He stood at the open trunk staring at his brother in the light of a waning moon, in the spill of motel neon, as he held a sawed-off shotgun.

Always the eyes, with Dean.

And Dean wasn't home.


	9. Chapter 9

**  ~ NOW ~   
**

From his motel room door, Bobby murmured, "I'll get dressed."

Nothing said by the woman from the hospital had prepared Sam for this version of his brother. He'd seen variations of it before, recalled moments when something had screwed with Dean, but this was different.

He approached the Impala slowly, without excess movement. He'd seen Dean badly hurt, very drunk, caught in the throes of a nightmare, and he had learned that when not physically restrained, nothing interfered with his brother's insanely fast reflexes, or his ability to harm anyone viewed as a potential enemy. Sam had found that out the hard way many years before. And right now, Dean held a gun in his hands.

It was a shotgun loaded with rock salt, but Sam nonetheless did not wish to catch a blast. He'd seen what happened when a human chest got in the way. It had taken him a long time to pick rock salt out of his brother when he'd been shot at close range, and Sam had seen the residual pock marks and bruising in his flesh.

As usual, he winced inwardly. That memory always bothered Sam greatly, since he'd been the one who'd fired the gun. He hadn't been in his right mind, but that kind of guilt never faded.

Dean did not appear to be in _his_ right mind at the moment.

But Sam had no time to consider the cause, or potential explanations. There was his brother to contend with, who was clearly not himself. But boosting a car to get him back across town? Dean could do that in his sleep.

Sam eased forward, then paused at the rear quarter panel. "Hey?"

Dean stared at him fixedly with an expression of such intensity it made the hair on the back of Sam's neck twitch. Under that gaze, he felt like just possibly he was more than enemy. Was in fact _prey_.

"Dean? You in there, man?"

Dean tilted his head just slightly, as if contemplating the question. As if _translating_ the language.

"Hey," Sam repeated. "You okay? What's up with you? I thought you were staying at the hospital overnight."

Dean blinked twice. Long, hard blinks, as if to clear his vision. One hand rose, touched the side of his head briefly, then fell back.

Sam maintained an even, casual tone with effort. He felt like his brother was a hand grenade, and he didn't know if the pin was still in, or pulled. "Dean. Dude. What's up? What are we doing?"

Dean's face was very smooth, almost devoid of expression. In poor light his eyes were wide, pupils swollen, fixed. It was almost as if he were _waiting_.

"How about you put the gun down, come inside the room, and we'll talk," Sam suggested. "Come on, Dean. Let's go inside. Beer, whiskey, porn-on-demand . . . the works."

Two doors down, the light depending from the motel roof overhang buzzed, then popped. Glass shattered, fell, as the bulb exploded.

Sam automatically reached to the small of his back for his gun, vastly accustomed to lights going wonky when the supernatural appeared. But his attention was yanked away by his brother almost at once.

The fracturing of the bulb broke Dean's reverie. He spun, bringing the shotgun into position to fire, and for a moment Sam thought he might just do it. But he, like Sam, instantly registered no threat, just noise. Nothing more than a broken light bulb.

Dean abruptly turned back to the car and slammed down the trunk lid. The shotgun remained in his right hand, and Sam noted he'd tucked the handgun bearing consecrated iron rounds into his front waistband.

Sam drew in a breath to speak, but Dean beat him to it with a clipped, aggressive tone. "Going."

No more than that. "'Going?'" Sam echoed, frowning in bafflement. "We're going somewhere? Is that why you left the hospital? Where, Dean? Where do you want to go?"

" _Going_."

Dean seemed more alert now, but this? This was simply bizarre. It was an announcement, not an explanation.

Sam nodded, hands partly raised in hopes of keeping calm a potentially dangerous situation. "I got that. Going where?" He stepped closer to his brother. "Where do you want to go?"

Dean moved around to the driver's side door. "Desert."

"You want to go to the desert _now_?"

"Desert."

"Dean, we decided to go tomorrow night . . . well, technically I guess _now_ it's tonight, but—" Sam waved a hand. "Never mind. Why do you want to go now?"

Dean dug into a pocket, tried another, came up empty-handed. His expression was genuinely puzzled, but riddled with impatience.

"If you're looking for the keys, I have them," Sam explained. "Don't you remember earlier today? You kicked Bobby and me out of your hospital room. We came back across town to do some research. Remember?" He patted a pocket in his jeans. "Keys are right here."

Dean put out a hand, the request, the _demand_ , obvious.

"Nuh-uh." Sam rounded the back of the car, paused not far from his brother. He very carefully kept his hands in view and still, but settled his weight in such a way that he could move swiftly if necessary. "Not until you can speak in sentences of more than one word. Because you're not in any shape to be driving . . . or going anywhere, for that matter. Dean—come inside. Let's figure this out."

Dean tilted his head. A frown slipped across his face, was gone. Reappeared. He touched his temple, took his hand away, then twitched from head to toe.

It was Bobby outside his door, dressed and quiet. "Sam, maybe we ought to let him go. Or _take_ him there, rather. This might be our best chance to find out what's goin' on. It began in the desert. Maybe it ends there."

"Or gets worse."

"It's not gonna get any better inside a motel room, or at the hospital."

" _Going_ ," Dean said, with emphasis in the word.

Single words. Was his brother so scrambled he now could only converse in a weird, abbreviated fashion?

Sam made the decision. "Okay, Bobby, maybe you're right. You'll follow?"

"I'm thinkin' it's better I come with," Bobby said, "because I don't believe either one of us has any idea what's goin' on inside your brother's head. Hell, I doubt _he_ knows. I'll sit behind him, be ready to move if necessary."

It chased a chill down Sam's spine as he glanced at Bobby across the Impala's roof. "You think he's a danger to us?"

"Look at him, son. You tell me."

Sam glanced back. Dean stood by the car staring at him fixedly with avid eyes, eyes that assessed. He held a shotgun, had one handgun at his back and one at his front. His posture radiated preparedness, the poised grace of a predator ready to move. To attack. It was a honed, sharp intensity. It poured off him as Sam had witnessed so often before, the raw, kinetic power of Dean's body.

It slipped through Sam's mind. _John Winchester's perfect soldier._

Only at this moment, that soldier wasn't even close to being himself.

"Yeah," Sam murmured, "right now I think he's probably a danger to anything that moves." He dug into his pocket, pulled out the keys, held them up so they glinted in the motel lighting, displayed them to Dean. "Okay, we'll go. But I'm driving. You've got shotgun." _In more ways than one_ , he reflected. To Bobby, he said, "Can you step into our room and grab the duffels, pull the door closed? We've got hot weather supplies, other stuff in there. Water and first aid's in the trunk."

Dean reached out, smacked the top of the car with the flat of his hand. " _Now_."

Sam reflected that he didn't quite look like his brother, not entirely, but _that_ controlled detonation was certainly quintessentially Dean Winchester.

* * *

Sammy couldn't help. He knew it. Sam was pinned to the wall, and Bobby was outside making sure the sprinkler system kept spraying holy water, trying to buy them time. Time to beat the deal.

But there was no time left. None at all. The clock struck midnight, just like in all the stories, and Ruby—no, _Lilith—_ opened the door to the hellhound _._

"Sic 'im, boyyy," she drawled.

And it did. It pounced, caught flesh, dragged him down, tore clothing, shredded flesh, muscle, viscera.

Sammy couldn't help.

And Dean went to hell.

Where the screaming of a soul in torment was a symphony to the demons who not only reveled in the sound, but brought it into being with exquisite instrumentation. Razors, knives, hooks, every kind of torture device known to mankind. And every one was employed. Dean became intimately acquainted with each. Acquainted, too, with the chief torturer, the demon called Alastair, who put on and took off so many hellbound vessels Dean could never be certain which was cutting on him.

He had come to know that he had no body in hell. Only a soul. But the soul conjured an image of the human vessel, and it was that vessel that experienced the agony. It felt like arms and legs, guts and liver, eyes and tongue, all cut off, cut out, _dug_ out. He could not count how many times he'd been flayed upon the rack, how often his blood was set to boiling in veins and arteries before it spilled out in its entirety upon the floor, leaving him exsanguinated.

He told himself every day that his body was elsewhere, that the vessel he knew as his own was not in hell and therefore could not be harmed. That he should not view himself as a man, as a human, as the clay that had come of John and Mary Winchester. So he conjured a construct in his mind: he was _essence_ , not reality. And essence could not be hurt.

But Alastair took that from him, too. Alastair rent the essence as much as he rent the soul, and therefore the body.

Every day.

And the day came when he could no longer bear it. When the last thread of selfhood broke. Ruby had told him he'd lose his humanity, would become a demon. Perhaps telling Alastair ' _Yes'_ was the first step toward surrendering that humanity, the first step on the road that led to demonhood.

He'd said ' _Yes_.'

And in his head he heard: _"You will be given the opportunity to say it again. Do this, accept this task, and you will be saved. You will be redeemed."_

Then another voice. That deep river of tone, so familiar, so beloved. It was safe harbor, that voice. "Dean. Son."

He knew it. Even in hell, he knew that voice.

"Dad?"

Silence.

"Dad?"

"We all make choices, kiddo. Sometimes they're the right ones. Sometimes they're the wrong ones. But we have to make the choices if we're to move on, if we're to accomplish anything. I made my choice when I learned of your mother's history, when it came clear what she and her father, and those before her father, did, and what I needed to do. Then an angel took the knowledge from me, but here . . . well, _here_ all is known. And I realized why it was so easy for me to become a hunter when your mother was murdered. It's what she was. It was in her blood. It was in _my_ blood. And it was _required_ , if I were to kill that yellow-eyed son of a bitch. You can't be soft, son. Not in Vietnam . . . not when chasing a demon. Survival depends on it."

"Dad—are you here? I thought you got out. I _saw_ you get out!"

"My soul isn't there anymore, Dean. But memory, yes. And you're there. Blood of my blood, bone of my bone. I can't come there. I can't get you out. But so long as you don't forget me, I'll come to you. Son . . . listen to me. It's about survival. Do what you have to do. Be what you have to be. Say what you have to say. Just know that no matter what may happen, I'm proud of you. You're my son. My eldest. I was hard on you. I know that, Dean. I wish it were different. But what I taught you, what you learned, is your deliverance. You will survive this. "

"Dad—I said ' _Yes'_. To Alastair."

"That ' _Yes'_ will hurt you, son. But—"

Nothingness. Silence. Absence.

"Dad?"

Emptiness.

_"Dad?"_

And Alastair said, "Daddy's left the building."

* * *

He roused abruptly, and he roused hard. His body jerked spasmodically against the leather upholstery and his right hand flailed and struck the rolled-up window. "Dad?"

His brain registered the feel of the seat, the sound of the car. He knew where he was, but not why. And when the Impala bobbled on the road, he clawed his way out of the dregs of dream or memory and sat upright, realizing he was not behind the wheel.

"Damn it, Sam, if you're gonna drive her, keep her on the road!"

"Holy crap!" His brother expelled it on a hard breath, straightening the wheel to bring the car back into line. "Dean? Are you with us? Is it you?"

"Where are we?" With effort, Dean sorted out arms and legs, cracked a stiff neck. "Still in Utah?"

Sam shot quick glances at him and at the road as he drove through the darkness. "You remember Utah?"

"Hell yes, I remember Utah." Dean glowered out the window, trying to make sense of the vast arid emptiness beneath a waning moon and a tablecloth of stars. "Where are we?"

"Arizona."

"Why are we in Arizona? And why are you driving? And where are we going?" He touched his brow. "Was I asleep?"

"We're in Arizona for a chupacabra, and I'm driving because you had some kind of weird . . . _episode_ . . . and we're going back out to the Superstitions because you insisted on it. But we needed to go anyway. Were going to go, in fact, tonight, but you kind of decided you wanted to go earlier. And no, you weren't asleep. You were . . . well, I don't know what you were. 'Not normal' is the best I can come up with."

Dean stared at his brother. "What the hell are you talking about?"

From directly behind him, a gravelly voice asked, "You want the whole novel, or the Cliff's Notes version."

Dean jumped. " _Je_ sus." Then he turned. "Bobby? What are you doing here?"

"This is what I was talking about," Sam told Bobby, staring into the rearview mirror. "It's like nothing happened, but he's missing time."

A shudder passed through Dean's body. "Four months topside. Forty years below."

Save for the rumble of the car, all was silent.

"Oh, Christ," Sam murmured finally. "I was hoping you'd remember all kinds of other things, but not that."

He felt distant. Detached. Different. "How can I not remember? I said _'Yes.'_ "

* * *

"You know where we're going?" Bobby asked.

In the thrumming darkness of the Impala—he hadn't turned on the radio—Sam nodded. "I've got GPS coordinates. We're almost there. In fact . . . " Sam slowed the car, let it roll to the side of the road, parked it but did not immediately turn off engine or headlights. "There's a trail. We'll go up it about about 200 yards, then cut off. If we walk one mile north, we'll be right where Dean and I were when . . . well, when whatever happened, happened."

"How's your brother looking?"

"Same as when we left the motel. Just staring out the windshield."

Bobby grunted. "I haven't known him to be this silent since your dad first brought you and your brother by. You squalled up a storm, drove us all crazy, though you shut right up when Dean held you. In fact, I think that's what made him start speaking again. Had to talk to his baby brother."

Sam looked at the slack body in the seat next to him. Within minutes of their departure from the motel, Dean had lapsed into utter silence. Not even single words had issued from his mouth in answer to Sam's questions, or of his own volition. His head lolled against the seat.

Sam shook his head. "I can't imagine Dean not talking a mile a minute."

"Shock, Sam. In one night he lost his mother, his home, and the father he'd known, because that's when John changed. The only constant he had then was you. Hell, you're the only constant he has now, too."

Sam had no memory of those early days. Certainly nothing of his mother's horrific death, of being snatched out of the crib by his father and pushed into his brother's arms. No memory at all of spending time at the salvage yard in those early days, no memories of Bobby's until he was three or four, and those recollections were but snatches. He didn't even remember Dean in those first two years, which seemed incomprehensible to him. Let alone that his brother—his wise-ass, mouthy, snarky brother—had stopped talking altogether for a while.

Sam looked at his brother's profile. So pure. So still. So utterly unlike Dean. And it hurt. It hurt terribly.

A wave of despair made his voice shake. "Bobby . . . I don't know what to do."

The older man sighed heavily. "Neither do I, son. And I wish to hell I did."

Then Dean shuddered, flailed, sat upright. _"Now,"_ he gasped, reaching for the door.

Sam lunged, grabbed. Came up empty. Dean had yanked up the lock stem, pulled open the door, and was out of the car.

Was running.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**~ NOW ~  
**

" _Go_ , Sam!" Bobby shouted. "I'll follow in the car, give you some light—"

And Sam piled out of the Impala, went tearing after his brother.

It had happened quickly, too quickly. No flashlight, no gun beyond his Taurus, and it housed normal bullets. Dean was the one with the shotgun, the consecrated iron rounds. Did he know something? Had he figured out what was happening?

The moon was barely a quarter, shedding little light. But as Sam sprinted across the road Bobby was as good as his word. He turned the Impala, faced her northwards, and headlights spilled across desert. Sam was aware of trees, of cactus, of shrubbery, most in silhouette but some illuminated by the bounce of headlights behind him. Bobby was leaving the road, driving into the desert, following him.

Following _them_. Because Dean was out here somewhere.

He did not at first see his brother. Dean had had just enough of a head start that he could have set a course that Sam couldn't find.

But the Impala's headlights, though they bobbed as her driver negotiated uneven ground, avoided trees, cactus, and shrubs, illuminated what lay before him, and he saw his brother.

Sam had the longer legs, and in distance running he'd win. But Dean's center of gravity was closer to the ground, his body slightly more compact, and he ran like a bull, head down and low, muscling through. Dean was built like a boxer; Sam, like a competitive swimmer. This particular playing ground was not, in the slightest, level.

Sam hit a snake hole, felt the ground collapse beneath one foot. He yanked it out of the depression, planted it again on solid earth, pushed off.

He didn't waste his breath on yelling. He was fairly certain it would do no good, and so he concentrated on breathing, on keeping himself from becoming winded. But he heard his breath nonetheless, was conscious of the oxygen exchange in his lungs, the increasingly noisy exhalations.

He was outrunning the Impala. He realized it as the stretch of headlights attenuated, as what lay before him fell more deeply into shadow. Bobby simply could not drive hellbent across the desert and keep the car in one piece. The Impala was many things, but it was not a 4-wheel-drive vehicle, was not an SUV, was simply not built for off-roading. And the desert was unforgiving.

But some light was better than none.

 _Some_ light, just now, touched on a man running ahead, dodging bushes, leaping low-growing vegetation, avoiding trees and cactus. Dean.

Sam tripped, fell, rolled, bounced up to his feet. A portion of his brain registered that he'd hit cactus, that spines had pierced one hand, but he had no time, and cactus wasn't deadly. Whatever Dean was running toward might well be.

 _Stop_ , he thought. _Dean—just stop. We'll figure out what's wrong, but first you gotta stop._

And Dean stopped _._

"Wait!" Sam shouted. "Dean—we do these things together! Always together!"

* * *

He ran because he was driven. He did not know why. It was in his blood, his bones, his flesh: to _run._

To run until he couldn't. Or until something stopped him.

His brother's voice stopped him.

Sam. Sammy. "—we do these things together!"

And they did. Always. Cases might require them to split up temporarily, but it was for the common purpose, the common good, and they always reunited.

Yet he had been running _away_ from Sam.

It was full dark with little moon, a raft of scattered stars, and the dusky glow of headlights fallen very far behind. But it was enough, in the darkness of a desert night, to see. He turned back toward the way he had come, conscious he carried a shotgun, had handguns tucked into his waistband front and rear. Loaded for bear.

 _What am I doing?_ he wondered. _Where am I going? Why am I here?_

And a voice said, "You're here to learn that you must say _'Yes.'"_

Dean flinched. It was a voice full of portents. Of promises. Of things unspoken. Things unknown.

"We'll wait for Sam," the voice said, "because it concerns him as much as it does you. That's the deal with you Winchesters. It's always a two-fer. Sam and Dean. Dean and Sam. But then, it's always been this way. Long before humans crawled out of the primordial sea. Two-by-two, even on the ark."

Dean watched the silhouette of his brother walk out of the glow of fading headlights. Tall, broad-shouldered, long-limbed. He nursed a hand, plucking at the edges of it, and Dean saw cactus thorns.

"You okay?" Sam asked. His eyes moved swiftly to evaluate his brother. "Dean?"

"I'm fine," Dean answered. "You?"

"Yeah. A few punctures, but I'm good."

"Okay," the voice said in a cheery tone, "the guests of honor are here. We'll have a nice chat, shall we? And lest you worry—I've sent your friend Bobby back to South Dakota, where he won't remember a thing . . . and no, don't fret about the car, Dean. She's still right where Bobby left her. I'm even leaving the headlights on, since humans don't see as well as, well, my kind. Battery might be a little low when you get back to her, but she'll run."

He could not sort out from where the voice came. One moment it was here, then there, then there. "Who are you?" Dean rotated in a complete circle even as his brother did the same. Guns were in their hands. "What the hell do you want with us?"

"What I've always wanted," the voice said. "To show you the error of your ways, and to set you on the right path. But you are two of the most stubborn sons of bitches I've ever had the pleasure to work with—yes, it has been fun; for me, that is—and I decided it was time to get serious. So, yeah, I screwed with your heads. All of this. Memories, flashbacks, glimpses of the future—and the latter, by the way, I shouldn't have done. But if you don't fall in line, it's what will happen. That was just my way of trying to massage things a little, so you can avoid pain. Grief. Death. And worse."

Sam stood close to him now, stationing himself just off his brother's left. "Dude, you've been really messed up the last few days—you sure you're okay?"

He was aware that pressure in his skull was gone. Thoughts ran swiftly again. He felt _clear_. For the first time in a week, he was okay. Always would be, he thought, so long as his brother remained beside him, never let him go. "Yeah. I'm good, Sammy. I'm good."

A figure walked in from the darkness, came into illumination from distant headlights. He was tall, very broad, heavily muscled. White teeth glinted in a chocolate face. He wore pale blue hospital scrubs. "Hey, guys. Not what you were expecting, am I?"

"Huh," Dean said. "It's Not Florence."

The figure melted, assumed another form. And another. And another. It cycled through faces and bodies known to them both. "Not a nurse. Not an MRI tech—see?—and not Dr. James Corbin, neurologist. Hell, I'm not even a lawyer driving a toaster-on-wheels." The forms dissipated, leaving behind a man who was rather unprepossessing: of average height, average looks, sandy-colored hair, but even in bad light, a glint in the eyes that was obvious. And an all-encompassing smirk that set Dean's teeth on edge. "It wasn't the first time I've screwed with you, and I strongly suspect it won't be the last. Like I said: you're stubborn."

"Crap," Sam muttered. "Frickin' _Trickster_."

"Among other things," the man agreed. "Call me Loki. It will do, for now." He spread his hands, tone light and friendly. "So, how's your vacation been? We've spent a fun week together. I've enjoyed learning about you boys, what makes you tick . . . " He looked at Dean. "You're an interesting piece of work. Every time I peeled back a layer, there was another, and another, and _another_ . . . and all of them led to even deeper darkness. You see, _last_ time, in Florida, I screwed with Sam. It was easy—and I don't mean that in a derogatory way." He shot a smile at Sam. "All I had to do was kill his brother to show Sam what his life would be like. Of course, it took a few times. Over one hundred, as I recall. But your brother's main motivation is to please you, Dean. Always. Doesn't want to disappoint you. Which he did in that asylum when he shot you full of rock salt. And, oh, calling you a coward—yeah, low blow, but you need to remember that you can't always count on him, Dean. Like you can't count on him to say 'No.'" He laughed. "Now, _you_ , on the other hand . . . well, Dean, you want to please dear old dad. _Almost_ to the exclusion of all else, except that Dad's not here anymore. Yet the program he implanted in your brain remains foremost: Protect Sam. Save Sam. Keep Sam from going darkside. Above all, _don't let Sam say 'Yes' to Azazel._ And now? Someone—some _thing_ , far worse, something even your dad never contemplated: Lucifer. But you know what? That's the wrong goal. That doesn't serve heaven. Heaven has a script."

"You're monologuing," Dean said. "That makes for bad movies, bad TV shows."

The Trickster thrust a pointing finger into the air. "But sometimes, that's all we have. Sometimes, that's the moment the guest star shines." He smiled, and the amusement in his eyes deepened. "Both of you are supposed to say _'Yes._ ' It's foretold. It's what needs to happen. It's what _must_ happen. The problem is—you two schmucks keep trying to write your own ending. And that's not the way it works."

"So you screw with our heads?" Dean demanded. "You think tying us up in mental knots is the answer?"

"If it works." The Trickster shook his head. "We keep coming, don't we? Lucifer, Raphael, Zachariah . . . even me, though you don't yet know who I am." He shrugged. "I'm sure that's just a matter of time. You're not the stupid hairless apes Zachariah believes you to be. But yes, I screw with you. It's amusing. It actually serves a purpose. And since you don't deal well with threats, I figured I might have a better shot with my, well. . . shall we say . . . _unique_ approach."

"And I assume that's not working, either," Sam said, "or you wouldn't be here now."

He smiled. "How do you feel about 'Heat of the Moment,' Sam? You don't remember everything about our mutual experience because I made it so, but some of it, yeah. The song you do recall, and the pain of loss." He switched his gaze to Dean. "Okay boys, you can straighten up now and do what's expected of you, what was foretold about you, or things will get worse. Much worse. Say _'Yes.'_ Both of you."

"Well, if it's foretold, why is there any question?" Dean asked. "Why screw with us? Why _threaten_ us?"

Sam said, "It's always been about consent. It's about heart, and soul. It's free will, and the ability to say _'Yes'_ or _'No.'"_ He glanced at his brother. "And they're not certain we'll cave. There are big question marks next to our names, and they don't like it."

The Trickster smiled. "Look at it as a 'Matrix' thing. Take the blue pull, or the red pill. Guys, guys, hey . . . I get where you're coming from. You've got Bad Boy Lucifer, Raphael with _no_ sense of humor, and Zachariah, the ultimate asswipe. Then there's me . . . " He spread his hands. "Hey, I like you guys. You amuse me. I screw with you because it's fun, not because I have an agenda . . ." And the grin spilled away, as did the humor. "Okay, that was then. This is now. Agenda City. We're on the cusp, boys. We're down to the wire. You need to say _'Yes.'_ Both of you."

Anger built. Threatened to rupture. Dean drew in an unsteady breath. It took immense self-control not to shout at the man. "So, all of it . . . _all_ of it was you. Everything we've been through the last week. All the memories."

"Since you got here, yes." His eyes shifted between both of them, weighing expressions, reactions. "All were moments you have experienced, or _will_ experience. Nothing was false. Those were _real_ memories, though I nudged a few of them in different directions. A couple were custom-made, not shared." He wagged his head back and forth. " In the meantime, yes, you still have free will. I'm just offering _information_. That's how decisions are made." He smiled. "I'll paraphrase Nancy Reagan, okay? 'Just say ' _Yes._ '"

As one they declared, _"No."_

The Trickster sighed heavily. "Boys, boys, boys. Wrong answer." But he not appear surprised _._ He smiled, dipped his head in something akin to acknowledgment as he saluted briefly. "Be seeing you," he said, and snapped his fingers.

* * *

"Sam! _Down!"_

And Sam dropped.

No hesitation. Not for an instant. Dean said _"Down!"_ and Sam followed orders.

He never questioned such orders from Dean. Just as Dean had never questioned them from their father.

 _"Sonuvabitch!"_ That, too: Dean _._

Sam threw himself flat, belly-down, protecting his head with clasped hands, tensed against the blast from the shotgun practically on top of him. He closed his eyes tightly.

"Hah!" Dean cried. "Sammy—you okay?"

He was. He got to hands and knees. A matter of five feet away lay the tumbled body of a large, hairless, dark-skinned, dog-like creature.

In the bright light of a full moon, Dean grinned. " _Got_ that ugly mo-fo." He reached down a hand. "Come on, Sammy. Up and at 'em. We got work to do."

_**~ end ~  
** _

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is! The end of the ride! Thanks to all who have stuck with me. 
> 
> I'd wanted to do a story featuring our favorite Trickster/Gabriel for some time, but until this story began to jigsaw itself together in my head, I wasn't certain I could pull it off. According to show canon chronology, this falls in between "Mystery Spot" and "Changing Channels," when Gabriel still wanted Michael and Lucifer to meet in battle, but *before* the boys figured out the Trickster is an archangel. I wanted to post the time of setting in the summary, but I thought it might be a spoiler so I saved the reveal until now.
> 
> The Japan-frickin'-ese toaster? Well, as a friend put it, I "Mary-Sue'd" my car. I love him. His name is Fuji.
> 
> And yes, for those who notice these things, Gabriel's "Be seeing you" and salute is a shout-out to The Prisoner, one of the best brain-twisting shows ever televised. Also, before someone calls me on saying Sam is 6'5" rather than 6'4," which is all over the internet and in a physical description of Sam on the show . . . Jared himself says on one of the DVD commentaries that he's six-five. Since he was only 22 when the series began, maybe he grew an inch! 8-)
> 
> Thanks again! I had a blast. Please let me know what you thought!


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